First, you need to serve a notice of noncompliance. These are often referred to as Five Day Notices, or Five Day Pay or Quit Notices. Under the current Arizona Residential Landlord Tenant Act, “ARLTA”, the landlord should either hand deliver this notice to the tenant, or mail it certified. This allows for the tenant to come into compliance by paying the back rent. This includes rent, late fees, and any other fees that would be included in the rental balance. If the tenant pays this balance, then they have come back into compliance with the lease agreement.

You should always have a written lease agreement. However, you are still able to serve a tenant a notice for non-payment. It is still the same notice served in the same manner, but you are only entitled to the agreed upon rent, or fair market rental value, if there is no agreed upon rent. You may not charge late fees, notice fees, or any other fees that would be allowable had there been a written lease agreement.

This is now where you are able to file a Forcible Detainer action, or Eviction Action in the courts. Depending on the amount that is owed, you may be filing in the Justice Court or in the Superior Court. If your property, or the business in which you manage your property is incorporated as an LLC or Corporation, you should now hire an attorney to help you in the eviction process.

There are many ways a tenant can be in non-compliance with the lease agreement or law. Non-payment of rent is the most common. Others include allowing unauthorized occupants to live in the unit, allowing unauthorized pets to be in the unit, damaging the property, not keeping up the landscaping, criminal activity, unsanitary living conditions, and many more. Most noncompliance’s the landlord is required to serve a Ten Day Noncompliance notice to the tenant. This notice will outline the noncompliance, and gives the tenant 10 days to come into compliance.

There are some noncompliance’s that only require a 5 Day Health and Safety Notice, and in the instances of criminal activity, there are times where the landlord may deliver an Immediate Notice of Termination. The landlord is able to file eviction actions on each notice, so long as the landlord is filing after the required time frame allowing the tenant their remedial days.

If a Landlord has done everything correctly, we can normally get the tenant out within the month. The process moves fairly quickly. Once the Eviction Action is filed with the courts, there is typically an initial eviction hearing within 7 days. Very often, judgment is granted at that hearing. If the Judge wants to hear more, then another hearing will be set within 3-5 days. Five days after the entry of the judgment, the Landlord can then request that the court send out the constable to finalize the lock out.

No. If the landlord takes it upon himself to change the locks of the unit and lock the tenant out without the court order, the tenant would then have a claim against the landlord for an unlawful eviction. There are a few exceptions, including abandonment, but always consult with your attorney prior to taking any action to dispossess the tenants of the unit without the court order.

The landlord must hold the tenants personal property for 21 days after the constable does the lock out. This does not mean that the landlord must hold the property in the unit, but that it must be held for 21 days. If the tenant does not retrieve the belongings within the 21 days, the landlord can then dispose of the property as commercially reasonable.

There are several different options at your disposal for maximizing your recovery in the debt collection process. We will take an in-depth look at your situation in order to determine which strategy works best for you. From working out repayment agreements to:

• Enforcing of contracts
• Obtaining judgments
• Executions
• Wage Garnishments
• Bank Garnishments