Lease Acceleration Clause
in Phoenix, AZ
How this page is sourced
Statutes verified against primary state sources
Every statute cited here was read in its published text before this page went live: on the state's own site where that site can be reached, otherwise on a republished copy of the code. Court decisions are quoted from the published opinion and linked to it, so you can read the original yourself.
Primary sourcesNot legal advice
Content verified against primary state statutes before publicationLast updated: October 2026
What it actually means, what Arizona law says, what's specific to Phoenix - and exactly what to do. In plain English.
Quick Summary - What You Need to Know
- Phoenix adds nothing on rent acceleration; Arizona's Residential Landlord and Tenant Act governs statewide.
- A.R.S. § 33-1368(C) limits recovery to reasonable damages, court costs and attorney fees, not accelerated future rent.
- A.R.S. § 33-1370 requires reasonable efforts to re-rent at a fair rental after you abandon the unit.
- Abandonment: seven days gone with rent ten days unpaid, or five days gone, rent five days unpaid, belongings removed.
- If the landlord skips those efforts or accepts the abandonment as a surrender, the rental agreement terminates.
Step by step
How it plays out
- You leave earlyThe clause demands everythingA.R.S. § 33-1368(C) limits recovery to reasonable damages, court costs and attorney fees, and does not authorize accelerated future rent.
- Abandonment occursSeven-day or five-day test metSeven days gone with rent ten days unpaid, or five days gone with rent five days unpaid and property removed.
- Unit sits emptyLandlord must try to re-rentA.R.S. § 33-1370 requires reasonable efforts to rent the unit at a fair rental.
- No effort madeThe rental agreement terminatesIf the landlord fails to use reasonable efforts, or accepts the abandonment as a surrender, the rental agreement terminates.
Count it for your dates
7 days: when does it end?
What it means: This is the earliest day the seven-day absence test can be met. Abandonment also needs rent unpaid for ten days and no reasonable evidence you still live there, and this date does not count the unpaid-rent days. Once abandonment occurs, your landlord must make reasonable efforts to re-rent the unit at a fair rental. Applies to the seven-day abandonment test; a five-day test also applies when rent is five days unpaid and your personal property is removed (A.R.S. § 33-1370). Calendar arithmetic only; check how the section counts days before you rely on a date.
Copy and send: When your landlord bills you for rent after you moved out early
Ask what was done to re-rent the unit
Fill in the brackets and keep a copy of what you send.
How Arizona compares
Landlord duty to mitigate after an early lease break, state by state
No figureGuide coming soonYou are here
See all 25 cities as a chart
Figures are the state rule, or the stronger city ordinance where one exists. Verify the current law for your own situation before relying on it.
Understanding the Lease Acceleration Clause
This page is for Phoenix renters whose lease has an acceleration clause: the paragraph that makes every remaining month of rent due at once if you break the lease. On paper the bill is months left times the rent.
Arizona does not measure it that way. What you can owe depends on whether you legally abandoned the unit, what your landlord did to re-rent it, and what reasonable damages the landlord can show.
What renters assume
My lease says all remaining rent is due when I leave early, so my landlord can collect every month without trying to re-rent.
What is actually true
Not in Arizona. A.R.S. § 33-1368(C) limits recovery to reasonable damages, court costs and attorney fees, and does not authorize accelerated future rent. After abandonment, § 33-1370 requires reasonable efforts to re-rent.
Arizona sits on the protective side of this chart. A Florida landlord may legally do nothing and bill you month by month, and our Georgia record finds no mitigation statute - while Arizona's duty attaches the moment abandonment is established.
Rent Acceleration Clause Example - What the Wording Looks Like in Phoenix, AZ
The sample clause below is real lease language - a court quoted it word for word, and then ruled on it. What the judge decided is at the bottom of this block.
Find the equivalent paragraph in your own lease and read the two side by side. The wording will differ; the moving parts rarely do.
As the court reproduced it. The passage below is not the whole paragraph - a sentence about late fees and interest on accelerated amounts comes after it and has been left out:
If any monthly installment under this agreement is not paid when due and remains unpaid after a date specified by a notice to Tenant, the entire principal rent amount owed for the full lease term shall at once become due and payable at the option of the Landlord and judgment may be had for all said amounts due. The foregoing provision shall not relieve the Landlord of its obligation to mitigate damages. In the event the rental premises is re-rented to another for full value prior to expiration of the lease term, Landlord shall file Notice of Partial Satisfaction of any judgment entered to the extent of the third party rental agreement.
[…]
Quoted from the published opinion in Summers v. Crestview Apartments, 2010 MT 164, 357 Mont. 123, 236 P.3d 586 (No. DA 09-0489). Judicial opinions are not subject to copyright; the lease language is reproduced in limited part for commentary under 17 U.S.C. § 107.
What the 4 highlighted phrases mean
“If any monthly installment”
The lease triggers on a missed payment. The Arizona statute triggers on something else entirely, and it counts days to get there. A.R.S. § 33-1370 treats a unit as abandoned after seven days' absence with rent unpaid ten days and no reasonable evidence of occupancy, or after five days' absence with rent unpaid five days and the tenant's personal property removed. A missed installment on its own satisfies neither test, so the landlord's statutory re-rental duty has not started even though this paragraph has.
“shall at once become due and payable”
Here is the Arizona sentence to hold next to this one. A.R.S. § 33-1368(C) limits what a landlord may recover to reasonable damages, court costs and attorney fees, and our Arizona record is explicit that the subsection does not authorise accelerated future rent. That is not the same as the lease being blank paper. It is that the statutory list of recoverable items does not include the thing this sentence converts into a debt on the day of default.
See the example
“at the option of the Landlord”
Arizona attaches a consequence to what the landlord does about the empty unit, and it runs back into the lease itself. If the landlord fails to use reasonable efforts to rent the unit at a fair rental, or accepts the abandonment as a surrender, the rental agreement terminates - and a terminated agreement is a poor foundation for a demand built on that agreement's own acceleration paragraph. The option this sentence hands the landlord is therefore not free-standing: what the landlord does about the empty unit feeds back into whether the lease is still there to be enforced.
See the example
“is re-rented to another”
Re-renting is the statutory duty in Arizona, and the standard is a fair rental rather than whatever the old lease said. Compare Florida, where Fla. Stat. § 83.595 expressly permits a landlord to stand by and do nothing, holding the tenant liable for rent as it becomes due. Phoenix and Miami read this same sentence in opposite directions: in one, the landlord's inaction can end the agreement; in the other, inaction is one of the remedies on the list.
The Montana Supreme Court struck this paragraph down, and its conclusion is one sentence: “Thus, we conclude that the accelerated rent provision is unconscionable and therefore unenforceable.” The tenants had moved out of their apartment on October 13, 2006, and Crestview answered with a Statement of Deductions from the Security Deposit charging rent through the end of the lease in June - $6,505.75 billed against a $2,170 deposit. Two reasons carried the court. Acceleration undermines the landlord's duty to mitigate and reduces the incentive to re-rent promptly, because a landlord already holding a judgment for the whole term has little reason to fill the unit. And Crestview drafted the lease while these tenants had no meaningful choice and no opportunity to negotiate any of it. The case was reversed and remanded, and two justices wrote separately - their objection being that the majority had gone as far as treating acceleration clauses as unenforceable in themselves. So read the holding narrowly, as the majority wrote it: this provision, in this residential lease, unconscionable and unenforceable. It is a Montana decision and it binds no other state's courts. What travels is the reasoning, and the reasoning is about mitigation - which is exactly the question the statute in your own city's decode answers.
How this state's law treats this clause
One court, one lease, one state. That answer is not automatically yours, and your lease may be worded to land differently. Use this to know what to look for and what to ask - your state's tenant hotline or a local tenant attorney can answer it for your document.
Arizona Law on Lease Acceleration Clause
- A.R.S. § 33-1370 requires the landlord to make reasonable efforts to rent the dwelling unit at a fair rental after abandonment.
- Abandonment means seven days' absence with rent unpaid ten days and no reasonable evidence of occupancy, or five days' absence with rent unpaid five days and personal property removed.
- If the landlord fails to use reasonable efforts, or accepts the abandonment as a surrender, the rental agreement terminates.
- A.R.S. § 33-1368(C) limits landlord recovery to reasonable damages, court costs and attorney fees, and does not authorize accelerated future rent.
Sources include Ariz. Rev. Stat. § 33-1370 - statutes change; verify the current text for your situation.
Two sections of Arizona's Residential Landlord and Tenant Act set the limits. A.R.S. § 33-1368(C) limits what a landlord can recover to reasonable damages, court costs and attorney fees, and does not authorize accelerated future rent.
A.R.S. § 33-1370 sets the duty to re-rent, which starts at abandonment, not at your goodbye email.
- First abandonment test. Seven days' absence with rent unpaid ten days and no reasonable evidence of occupancy.
- Second abandonment test. Five days' absence with rent unpaid five days and your personal property removed.
- The duty. Once abandonment occurs, your landlord must make reasonable efforts to rent the unit at a fair rental.
- If the landlord does not try. If the landlord fails to use reasonable efforts, or accepts the abandonment as a surrender, the rental agreement terminates.
No section we read sets a number of days for the re-rental effort.
What's Specific to Phoenix
Our Arizona record finds no Phoenix rule on rent acceleration. The state's Residential Landlord and Tenant Act governs statewide, so a lease in Ahwatukee, Maryvale or a downtown high-rise is read under the same two sections.
That leaves the paragraph you signed and the dates of your move-out as the facts to check. Keep proof of the day you left, the day you returned the keys and the last rent you paid, since the abandonment tests count days absent and days unpaid.
That matches A.R.S. § 33-1370. A lease that stays silent does not erase the duty to make reasonable efforts to re-rent after abandonment.
The statute uses seven days gone with rent ten days unpaid, or five days gone with rent five days unpaid and property removed.
Red flag. A.R.S. § 33-1368(C) limits recovery to reasonable damages, court costs and attorney fees. It does not authorize accelerated future rent.
Push back before signing. A.R.S. § 33-1370 puts a re-rental duty on your landlord once abandonment occurs.
Sources
The law this guide relies on, and where to read it. Statutes change, so confirm the current text before you act on it.
- Ariz. Rev. Stat. § 33-1370 on azleg.gov, Arizona's own publication of its statutes.
Red Flags to Watch Out For
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All remaining rent due immediately
The clause bills every unexpired month the day you leave. A.R.S. § 33-1368(C) does not authorize accelerated future rent. Ask for the damages behind each amount.
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No obligation to re-rent
Wording that frees your landlord from finding a new tenant. A.R.S. § 33-1370 requires reasonable efforts to re-rent at a fair rental after abandonment.
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Acceleration stacked on re-letting fees
The lease takes the full balance and a separate re-letting charge. Ask which amounts are real damages and which are the same loss billed twice.
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Abandonment shorter than the statute
A clause treating a two-day absence as abandonment. Arizona's tests are seven days with rent ten days unpaid, or five days with rent five days unpaid and property removed.
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Deposit kept plus the full balance
Your entire deposit is kept and the accelerated bill still arrives. Ask in writing what the deposit was credited against.
Your Rights as a Phoenix Tenant
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A landlord who has to try
After abandonment, A.R.S. § 33-1370 requires reasonable efforts to re-rent the unit at a fair rental.
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The agreement can end
If your landlord skips those efforts or accepts the abandonment as a surrender, the rental agreement terminates.
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Damages have to be reasonable
A.R.S. § 33-1368(C) limits recovery to reasonable damages, court costs and attorney fees, not accelerated future rent.
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Proof, not round numbers
You can ask for the relisting date, the new rent and receipts. Check any claim of a long vacancy against those facts.
What To Do - Step by Step
Find the acceleration paragraph
Search your lease for "accelerate", "all remaining rent" or "balance of the term". That wording is the number your landlord will start from.
Give dated written notice
Email it and mail it. Arizona's abandonment tests turn on days absent and unpaid rent, so keep proof of the dates.
Return keys and document the unit
Photograph every room and hand back the keys on a date you can prove.
Watch for the relisting
Check the property's own site and listing sites weekly. Screenshot the listing, the asking rent and any free-month offer the day it appears.
Ask for an itemized statement
Ask in writing for the re-rental date, the new rent and receipts for actual costs. Recovery is limited to reasonable damages, court costs and attorney fees.
Get free Arizona tenant help
Community Legal Services takes Maricopa County landlord-tenant cases for qualifying renters. The Arizona Department of Housing publishes the Landlord and Tenant Act free.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Lease Acceleration rules near Arizona
The same clause in the nearest states we cover.
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