Free Arizona Roommate Agreement

A roommate agreement is a contract between the roommates. The landlord is not a party to it, it does not change the lease, and it cannot release anyone from it. In Arizona two statutory facts sit around that agreement and both are unusual. The first is that § 33-1317(F) makes two persons per bedroom a presumption written into state law rather than borrowed from federal guidance. The second is § 33-1318(J), which decides what happens to everyone else when one tenant leaves under the domestic-violence provision — and Arizona’s answer is different from almost every other state’s.

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A roommate agreement settles the questions the lease leaves to the people living together: rooms, rent shares, deposit shares, utilities, guests, cleaning, and what a departing roommate owes the others. It settles none of them against the landlord. Every tenant named on the rental agreement can still be pursued for the whole rent where the lease makes that liability joint and several, as most leases do. The Act itself creates no such rule — § 33-1318(D)’s reference to a tenant being “solely or jointly liable” presupposes whatever the rental agreement did, rather than imposing anything. What this agreement gives you is a claim against each other, which is worth having precisely because the claim the landlord has is not divisible.

• Who is named as a tenant on the rental agreement, and who is not
• The number of people actually occupying the unit, and the number of bedrooms
• Each roommate’s share of the rent, and who pays the landlord
• Each roommate’s share of the deposit, and how it is divided when returned
• That the deposit cap is one and a half months’ rent and the statute does not split it
• What the roommates will do if one of them terminates under § 33-1318
• Guests, and who may authorise one to stay
• The notice a departing roommate gives the others
• Who finds and approves a replacement, and what the landlord requires
• That the agreement binds the roommates only and does not bind the landlord

• Assuming the remaining roommates simply absorb the rent. Section 33-1318(J) terminates the tenancy for the other tenants too. The question is not who pays the share, it is whether anyone gets to stay.
• Looking for a city occupancy rule. Section 33-1317(F)’s presumption reaches every political subdivision of the state, so there is no separate municipal figure.
• Misstating the number of occupants on the application or lease. That is material falsification under section 33-1368(A)(1), curable in ten days.
• Expecting the landlord to split the deposit. Section 33-1321 owes the refund to “the tenant” and contains no apportionment rule at all.
• Mixing up Arizona’s three acts. Chapter 10 is the residential act; chapter 11 is mobile home parks and chapter 7 is the older general chapter. They are not interchangeable.

No. Reading the whole of the Arizona Residential Landlord and Tenant Act — all 53 sections of title 33 chapter 10, 90,741 characters — returns zero occurrences of “roommate”, “co-tenant”, “co-occupant” or “additional occupant”. There is no statutory right to have a roommate, no process for adding or removing one, and no rule allocating rent between people who share a unit. The words “sublet” and “sublease” appear nowhere in the chapter either.

That is a measured absence rather than an assumption, and it is scoped to chapter 10 — which is where such a rule would sit. It does not describe Arizona case law, which was not searched, or municipal ordinances beyond the reach of the preemption discussed below.

What the Act does contain runs the other way. Section 33-1368(A)(1) makes a material misstatement about the number of occupants a breach the landlord can act on. And § 33-1310(13) defines a rental agreement to include one that is “oral or implied by law”, which matters more than it sounds: a guest who stays long enough, pays something and is treated as a resident may stop being a guest without anyone signing anything.

Most states leave occupancy limits to federal guidance and local building codes, which is why the familiar “two per bedroom” figure is so hard to pin down. Arizona wrote it into statute. Section 33-1317(F) makes two persons per bedroom “presumed reasonable for this state and all political subdivisions of this state”.

The phrase about political subdivisions is doing real work. It means the presumption applies in Phoenix, Tucson and everywhere else in the state rather than stopping at the state line of each city’s own code. What was not surveyed for this page is whether a particular municipality sets its own occupancy standard in its housing code, so check the local code before treating the figure as the only one that applies. The direction of that safe harbour matters, though: it is written for the owner. It protects a landlord who has adopted the two-per-bedroom standard. It does not create a presumption against a landlord who sets a lower limit, and it is not a figure a tenant can insist on.

The presumption is not unlimited. It protects an occupancy standard the landlord has actually adopted and published, and it has to be applied without regard to age — otherwise it collides with the familial-status protections in § 41-1491.14. A standard invented for one applicant is not the standard the statute protects.

Section 33-1318 lets a tenant terminate the rental agreement early where the tenant is a victim of domestic violence, or was the victim, in the tenant’s own dwelling, of sexual assault. Most of it looks like other states’ provisions. Subsection (J) does not.

Where the tenant terminates, the section provides that the tenancy for the other tenants also terminates. Read that carefully, because it is the opposite of what a roommate agreement usually plans for. The other roommates are not left holding a vacant share; they are left without the right to occupy. Whether they stay is then a question for the landlord, and in practice means being screened again on current criteria.

Two further points are worth knowing. Section 33-1318(I) reaches an abuser “regardless of whether” that person is a party to the rental agreement, so it is not limited to people on the lease. And stalking is not among the triggers — the word does not appear in the section at all.

The practical response is not a penalty clause. A statutory right cannot be penalised, and the remaining roommates could not have prevented the departure. What the agreement can usefully do is say who contacts the landlord, how quickly, and what the roommates will do about the deposit if the tenancy ends for everyone at once.

Section 33-1321 caps the deposit at one and a half months’ rent. The refund mechanics are where Arizona differs from its neighbours: the landlord has fourteen business days, and the clock runs from termination of the tenancy, delivery of possession and a demand from the tenant. The demand is a real precondition and it is easy to overlook when several people are moving out at different times. Failing to comply exposes the landlord to twice the amount wrongfully withheld.

What the section does not do is divide anything. It owes the refund to “the tenant”, and there is no apportionment rule anywhere in the chapter. Whatever the roommates have agreed between themselves is the only allocation that exists, which is the argument for writing the deposit shares down before the money is paid rather than after it comes back.

Arizona gives a tenant something most states do not. Section 33-1378 provides that a guest of a tenant who is not named on a written lease, and who remains on the premises without the permission of the tenant or the landlord, is not a lawful tenant and may be removed by a law enforcement officer at the request of the tenant or landlord entitled to possession. For a roommate group dealing with someone’s visitor who has stopped leaving, that is a genuinely useful route.

Its limit is the definition problem noted above. The route works while the person is still a guest, and § 33-1310(13)’s recognition of oral and implied rental agreements means that status can end quietly. Accepting rent from them is the clearest way to end it. If a person has been paying to stay, treating them as a guest may no longer be available.

This document binds the people who sign it to each other. The landlord is not a party to it and is not bound by it, and no clause in it can move anyone on or off the rental agreement — that takes the landlord’s written agreement. Until it happens, and where the lease makes the tenants jointly and severally liable, each tenant named on it can be pursued for the entire rent regardless of the shares recorded here. No Arizona statute creates that liability — it comes from the lease, so read what yours says. What the agreement does is make the internal arrangement provable: who agreed to pay what, who agreed to cover a gap, and on what terms a departing roommate’s deposit share comes back.

A roommate agreement is a private contract, so most of what it does is decided by the roommates rather than by statute. The parts that state law does reach are the ones that involve the landlord — and the biggest of those is the deposit. Our guide to Arizona security deposit laws sets out what the landlord may hold and when it has to come back, which is the money the roommates are dividing between themselves.

The other place state law bites is non-payment. An internal agreement about shares does not change what the landlord may do if the total rent is short, and Arizona eviction notice laws explain the notices and timelines that follow — which reach everyone named on the lease, not only the roommate who fell behind.

For the obligations that run between a landlord and the tenants throughout the tenancy, and the rules that apply to both sides, see Arizona landlord tenant laws.

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