Template sites will sell you a residential lease with blanks for the term dates. The blanks aren't the hard part. The hard part is what happens on the day after the term ends, what happens when one of four tenants quits in February and drives to Baja, and what your state gives you for a deadline to return the deposit, because those three answers vary more than the form does, and they're where seasonal rentals actually go sideways.
Here's what a seasonal lease has to settle that a standard 12-month lease doesn't.
Pick the end date, then decide what happens the next morning
A fixed term ending in mid-April matches a ski season. It also means that on April 16 you either have a signed extension, an empty unit, or a holdover tenant, and your lease should say which.
The two structures both work, and they fail differently. A fixed term gives you a clean date and a known vacancy. Month-to-month gives you flexibility and gives your tenant flexibility, which in a town where someone can get a summer job in Alaska is not symmetrical. The hybrid most owners want is a fixed term with an express holdover clause: state that the tenancy does not automatically renew, that continued occupancy without a written extension converts to month-to-month at a stated rent, and how much notice either side owes to end it.
What that clause is worth depends on your state, and three of the busiest seasonal markets answer differently.
Colorado. The 2024 for-cause eviction law, at C.R.S. 38-12-1301 et seq., generally requires a landlord to offer renewal or show cause for not renewing. Several exemptions matter here: short-term rentals under 30 days, certain owner-occupied properties, mobile home lots, employer-provided housing, and tenants who have been a tenant of the premises for less than 12 months. A single five-month winter lease in Breckenridge falls outside the law's protections on its face. A worker who came back for a second season, or who stayed through the summer, is a closer question that turns on facts, and it's worth a conversation with a Colorado attorney before you assume a returning tenant is still exempt.
California. The Tenant Protection Act works on a similar clock from the other direction: just cause protections attach after a tenant has continuously and lawfully occupied the unit for 12 months, or 24 months where an adult was added later. Single-family homes and condos can be exempt, but only if the property isn't owned by a corporation, REIT, or LLC with a corporate member, and only if you gave the tenant the exact statutory exemption notice, in the lease itself for tenancies started or renewed since July 1, 2020. Truckee and South Lake Tahoe owners who skip that notice lose the exemption, and a returning worker who stacks a winter and a summer crosses the 12-month line without anyone marking the date.
Wyoming. The Residential Rental Property Act is thin by comparison, and it leaves most termination mechanics to the agreement. In practice that means the lease is your rulebook in Jackson: if the notice period, the holdover rent, and the renewal process aren't written down, you may not have them. Write them down.
Four names on one lease
Joint and several liability means each tenant is responsible for the whole rent, not a quarter of it. If two of four roommates vanish, you can pursue the remaining two for the full amount rather than for their share. Every seasonal lease with roommates should say so in plain words, and every adult occupant should sign it.
That structure also implies things about deposits people forget. There is one deposit for one unit, not four deposits belonging to four people. California made this explicit in 2026: under AB 414, when multiple adult tenants share a unit, the remaining deposit generally goes back in a single payment made out to all of them unless they've agreed in writing to something else. Deciding in April who owes whom for the broken closet door is a conversation between roommates. Do not make it your job by promising individual accounting at signing.
Screening deserves the same consistency. Screen every adult applicant against the same published criteria, meaning income, rental history and credit, and apply that standard to roommates and families identically. The occupancy limits post covers why a headcount rule invented on the fly is the fastest way to a fair housing complaint.
The February quit
Someone will leave mid-season. A cook gets a better offer in Bozeman, a relationship ends, an injury ends a ski season in January. Your lease should answer three questions before it happens.
Can the departing tenant find a replacement? The usual answer is yes with your written approval, and the approval standard should be the same criteria you use for everyone else. Write it that way, because a discretionary approval right applied inconsistently is a discrimination claim waiting to happen.
Does the replacement sign the existing lease or a new one? Cleanest is an amendment adding the new tenant and releasing the old one, signed by everyone, with the deposit transferred between them privately rather than refunded and re-collected.
What do you charge? Actual, documented costs: screening fees where your state permits them, a modest re-lease administrative charge if allowed. Be careful with automatic fees: Colorado's 2026 security deposit amendments make lease provisions void where they assign a tenant a fee for repairs, cleaning, or other work attributable to normal wear and tear or to a condition that existed before the tenancy.
Also decide, in writing, whether the remaining roommates get a say. A "no substitutions without unanimous tenant consent" clause prevents you from being the referee in a roommate dispute you can't win.
Furnished units live or die on the inventory
Most seasonal rentals come furnished, and furnished means a schedule: bed frames, mattresses, the couch, the table and chairs, the pots, the plates, the snow shovel. Attach it as an exhibit, photograph everything, and have the tenants sign it at move-in. Without it you're arguing in small claims about whether the unit ever had a second nightstand.
Documentation rules have tightened, and two states now require what used to be best practice. California's AB 2801 phased in photo requirements to Civil Code § 1950.5: since April 1, 2025, landlords must photograph the unit after the tenant vacates and before repairs or cleaning, and again after that work is done, and since July 1, 2025, they must photograph the unit before move-in on new tenancies. The photos go to the tenant with the itemized statement, and deductions unsupported by them are exposed. Colorado's HB25-1249, effective January 1, 2026, requires a walk-through inspection on either party's request before the end of the tenancy, after the tenant has had a chance to remove furniture, and requires the landlord to hand over supporting documentation, including photos, inspection forms, receipts, invoices and estimates, within 14 days of a written request.
Neither rule is burdensome if you already photograph turnovers. Both are expensive if you don't.
Deposit deadlines: three states, three answers
This is the part that costs owners money, and it is the part most templates get wrong because the template was written for a different state.
Colorado. Since January 1, 2026, the deadline is 30 days after termination of the lease or surrender of the premises, whichever is later, unless the lease specifies a longer period, which may not exceed 60 days. You may not retain a deposit for normal wear and tear or for a condition that predated the tenancy. Withholding 125% or more of actual damages creates a presumption that the amount retained was unreasonable, the landlord carries the burden of proving actual damages in court, and willful retention still exposes you to treble damages plus fees. There are new limits on charging for carpet and paint, including a rule that carpet not replaced within the preceding 10 years can't be treated as substantially and irreparably damaged. Colorado also caps refundable pet deposits at $300, which matters in a county full of dogs.
Wyoming. Under Wyo. Stat. § 1-21-1208, the balance of the deposit and a written itemization of deductions go out within 30 days after termination of the rental agreement, or within 15 days after you receive the tenant's new mailing address, whichever is later. If there's damage to the unit, that period extends by another 30 days. The tenant has 30 days after termination to give you an address. Deposits are returned without interest, and Wyoming sets no statutory ceiling on the amount you may collect. Nonrefundable deposits require written notice under a separate section, so don't label anything nonrefundable in a Wyoming lease without checking that provision.
California. Twenty-one calendar days from the tenant vacating, for the itemized statement and the balance, with supporting documentation for deductions. Missing that window generally forfeits the deductions. Since July 1, 2024, AB 12 caps most residential deposits at one month's rent, furnished or not; a natural person or an LLC whose members are all natural persons, owning no more than two residential rental properties with four units or fewer combined, may collect up to two months, but that small-landlord exception doesn't apply where the prospective tenant is a service member. Nonrefundable deposits are void in California.
The gap between those three is the entire argument for verifying your own state's rule rather than copying a lease that worked for a friend in another state. A 21-day California deadline written into a Wyoming lease costs you nothing. A 60-day Colorado deadline written into a California lease costs you the deposit.
What to do about mud season
April 15 to Memorial Day, and again from mid-October to Thanksgiving, is when a seasonal rental earns nothing and a landlord starts making bad decisions. Four ways to handle it, each with an honest cost.
Price the season to cover the year. If the unit is only lettable for seven months, seven months of rent has to carry twelve months of expenses. Owners who price a winter lease against annual comps and then eat the shoulder are just discovering the vacancy later.
Run a deliberate month-to-month bridge. End the fixed term in April and offer the shoulder at a reduced rate to a tenant you want back in November. Cheaper than a full vacancy, and it keeps someone in the building through freeze-thaw season.
Split the year. A winter term and a summer term with a defined gap for maintenance and painting, plus a storage clause if you want returning tenants to leave gear. Storage terms should be explicit about liability, or the closet full of skis becomes your problem in July.
Or take the shoulder off the table entirely with a 12-month lease to a business that houses staff. That's what a staff-housing master lease does — one counterparty, twelve months, and turnover between crews that they manage instead of you.
Whichever you choose, the lease is where the choice becomes real, and none of the above substitutes for having a local attorney read your form once before you use it for five seasons. Once it's ready, list your unit with the term dates and occupancy stated up front, and check the city pages to see what comparable seasonal units in your town are asking this year.