What the Act is, and what it overrides
Most residential tenancies in Arizona are governed by the Arizona Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, found at Title 33, Chapter 10 of the Arizona Revised Statutes. Mobile home park tenancies sit under a different chapter, and some arrangements fall outside the Act entirely.
The practical point for owners is this: the Act sets a floor. A clause in your lease that conflicts with it does not win because it is in writing and because the resident signed it. Owners get into trouble by assuming that a lease they downloaded, or one that worked in another state, settles a question that the statute has already answered differently.
Read the Act once, properly. The Arizona Department of Housing publishes it, and the statute itself is on the Legislature's site. It is shorter than you expect.
The notices, and why the wrong one restarts the clock
Arizona uses different notice periods for different failures, and serving the wrong one is one of the most expensive unforced errors in this business — not because of a penalty, but because you generally have to start again, which costs you weeks in an occupied property that is not paying.
Broadly: nonpayment of rent has its own short notice period under A.R.S. § 33-1368. A material breach of the lease that is not about money carries a longer cure period, and a breach that materially affects health and safety carries a shorter one. There are separate provisions for conduct that endangers others. The eviction action itself is a special detainer under A.R.S. § 33-1377, and it has its own timing.
I am deliberately not printing a table of day counts here, because a table is what people rely on two years after it has changed. Confirm the current period in the statute or with counsel for the specific failure you are dealing with, every time. If you take one thing from this section: the notice is not a formality you can improvise, it is the foundation the whole case stands on.
Access: you own it, and you still have to give notice
A.R.S. § 33-1343 governs entry. The short version is that an owner or manager may enter for legitimate purposes — repairs, inspections, showing the home, supplying services — but must give the resident notice of intent to enter and must enter at reasonable times. Emergencies are treated differently.
This is the rule owners most often break by accident, usually with the best intentions: a contractor is in the area, the owner lets them in to look at something, nobody told the resident. It is also the rule that most reliably destroys a working relationship with an otherwise good long-term resident. Give the notice. Put it in writing so there is a record of it.
Habitability is an obligation, not a service level
A.R.S. § 33-1324 requires the landlord to maintain fit premises: comply with applicable building and health codes materially affecting health and safety, make necessary repairs, keep common areas safe, maintain the systems supplied with the property in good and safe working order, and supply running water and reasonable heat and air conditioning where those are under the landlord's control.
In this climate, air conditioning is the one to internalise. A failed air conditioner in July is not a routine work order. Treat cooling failures, water intrusion, sewage, gas, electrical and anything that locks or secures the property as their own emergency category, with a response standard that does not depend on which day of the week it is.
The Act also gives residents remedies when the obligation is not met — A.R.S. § 33-1361 and the sections around it. Those remedies are why "we will get to it" is not a strategy: an unaddressed habitability failure can end up costing an owner the rent as well as the repair.
Disclosures that have to happen at signing
A.R.S. § 33-1322 requires the landlord to disclose in writing the name and address of the person authorised to manage the premises and of the owner or the owner's authorised agent for service of process and notices. It also requires that the resident be given a signed copy of the rental agreement, and that the resident be informed the Act is available on the Arizona Department of Housing's website.
These are small, mechanical, and routinely missed by self-managing owners. Build them into the signing packet so they cannot be forgotten, rather than relying on remembering. Federal requirements apply on top of the state ones for pre-1978 housing.
The deposit deadline is the one to diary
A.R.S. § 33-1321 governs security deposits: what may be collected, what must be identified in writing as nonrefundable, the resident's right to be present at the move-out inspection, and the deadline for returning the deposit with an itemised statement of any deductions.
Arizona's deposit return deadline is counted in business days, not calendar days, which is exactly the sort of detail that gets an otherwise careful owner into trouble. Confirm the current count and the trigger in the statute and diary it the day the resident hands back the keys. Missing it can expose you to more than the amount you were trying to withhold.
It is worth its own article, and it has one: see Arizona security deposits and the move-out statement.
What changed recently, and the habit that keeps you current
Arizona's municipal transaction privilege tax on residential rental income — the "rental tax" that many Valley cities levied and that owners passed through to residents — was eliminated by state legislation effective 1 January 2025. Owners and managers who were collecting it had to stop, adjust their ledgers, and in many cases amend leases that referenced it. If you are still passing through a city rental tax on a residential lease, that needs checking now.
The habit that matters more than any single change: pick a fixed month each year to reread your lease template against the current statute, and to check whether the cities you own in have changed anything locally. Landlord–tenant law is amended most years. A lease template that has not been reviewed since you bought the property is a liability sitting quietly in a drawer.