What late fees can a landlord charge in Alaska?

Verified July 11, 2026 All Alaska topics →

Pending legislation — not yet law. The rules on this page reflect current law only. The following bill would change it if enacted:

HB 115 (34th Legislature, 2025-2026) — Would add AS 34.03.020(f): a landlord could not raise rent more than once per calendar year and would have to give written notice at least 90 days before the increase takes effect; if a tenancy ends without that notice having been given, the unit could not be re-rented above the old rent until 90 days after termination (anti-evasion clause). Applies to rental agreements entered into on or after the effective date. Would convert Alaska from a derivation state (no express rent-increase notice statute) to an express 90-day state.Status: Introduced 2025 (Rep. Gray); referred to House State Affairs and Labor & Commerce 2025-02-26; no committee action since (current status (H) STA, status date unchanged as of check). Alive until the 34th Legislature adjourns sine die. (checked 2026-07-11).

Alaska sets no cap on residential late fees and mandates no grace period - rent is payable without demand or notice at the time and place the parties agreed (AS 34.03.020(c)), and the landlord-tenant act never mentions late charges at all.

A late fee is therefore purely a creature of the rental agreement, policed only by contract law: the state's official guidance says a small flat-rate late or NSF charge that reasonably approximates the landlord's actual costs may be legal, and that no automatic charge is enforceable unless the parties agreed to it beforehand. Two Alaska-specific wrinkles matter in practice: 'rent' is statutorily defined as the uniform periodic payment due the landlord, so unpaid late fees are not unpaid rent - a tenant current on rent cannot be evicted for owing late fees - and Alaska omitted the uniform act's unconscionability clause, so an abusive fee is attacked through ordinary penalty-clause doctrine rather than a statutory backstop.

Alaska late fees at a glance

Statutory cap	No statutory cap (see reasonableness standard and notes)
Mandatory grace period	None mandated statewide
Must be in the lease	Not addressed by statute
Daily fees	Not addressed by statute. Official Department of Law guidance contemplates only 'a small flat-rate late charge or NSF fee that reasonably approximates the landlord's actual costs'; a compounding daily fee would have to survive ordinary liquidated-damages/penalty scrutiny in court, with no statutory safe harbor either way.
Reasonableness standard	No statutory cap, formula, or reasonableness standard - the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act is silent on late charges, and Alaska's URLTA enactment omitted the uniform act's unconscionability section, leaving only AS 34.03.040 (prohibited provisions), the AS 34.03.320 good-faith obligation, and common-law contract/liquidated-damages principles as brakes. The state's official guidance (Dept. of Law pamphlet; Court System PUB-30) says the Act 'does not state whether landlords may assess late charges,' that a small flat-rate charge reasonably approximating the landlord's actual costs 'may be legal,' and that no automatic late or NSF charge is enforceable unless agreed upon beforehand.

Notes and caveats

statutory_cap and grace_period_days null: verified negative - zero occurrences of 'late fee'/'late charge'/'liquidated' in the full official chapter text (all 44 sections fetched in one pass; section list enumerated), corroborated by both official guidance documents, which state the Act is silent. must_be_in_lease null rather than true (MT precedent): no STATUTE conditions late fees on the rental agreement; the agreed-beforehand requirement comes from contract law as restated in official DOL guidance ('no automatic late charge or NSF fee is legally enforceable unless it has been agreed upon beforehand') and rental agreements may be oral (34.03.360(19)). Eviction wrinkle for collections copy: because 'rent' means 'the uniform periodic payment due the landlord, however denominated' (34.03.360(18)), late fees are outside it - official guidance: 'a tenant cannot be evicted for failure to pay late fees if the tenant is current on rent payments.' Alaska's URLTA enactment has NO unconscionability section (uniform act sec. 1.303 not adopted - verified against the enumerated chapter section list); 34.03.040's prohibited-provisions list (waivers, confessed judgment, exculpation, landlord's attorney fees) does not address fees. Secondary-source claim that the AS 45.45.010 usury statute (10.5% default) caps percentage-based late fees is a speculative extension of a loan-interest statute - not encoded; no Alaska appellate decision fixing a late-fee standard was found. NSF checks have a separate civil-penalty regime outside the landlord-tenant act (guidance mentions lease-based NSF fees; not a rent late-fee rule).

Statute citations

AS 34.03.020 (a), (c) Official source
AS 34.03.360 (18) Official source
AS 34.03.040 (a)-(b) Official source
Alaska Dept. of Law, The Alaska Landlord & Tenant Act: what it means to you (2024) p. 4 ('Late charges') Official source
Alaska Court System, PUB-30 Alaska Landlord and Tenant Act handbook (10/18) Official source

How this record was verified: Direct read of statute text on the official Alaska State Legislature site (www.akleg.gov, Alaska Statutes 2024 infobase; the statutes.asp host 403s automated fetchers but serves full section text to curl with a browser user agent via its media=print endpoint): AS 34.03.070, 34.03.140, and 34.03.290 each fetched twice through independent request paths (single-section fetch plus a different-range fetch) with byte-identical results, and AS 34.03.020 fetched twice to verify the negative (no rent-increase language). The complete chapter (all 44 sections, 34.03.010-34.03.380) was fetched in one pass and every section heading enumerated for the verified-negative sweeps (no late-fee, grace-period, interest, unconscionability, rent-control, or preemption provision). Every load-bearing figure additionally reconciled against three more sources: the enrolled text of HB 282 (28th Leg.), Ch. 27 SLA 2014, read in full on the official BASIS bill-text system (pins the pet-deposit subsection, the per-tenant trust-accounting rules, and the 30-day damages exception to the 14-day return track, all added 2014); the Alaska Department of Law's official 2024 pamphlet 'The Alaska Landlord & Tenant Act: what it means to you' (law.alaska.gov); and the Alaska Court System's PUB-30 handbook (public.courts.alaska.gov, 10/18 ed.). FindLaw's mirror (current through 2025-01-01) matched the official 34.03.070 text verbatim as a second-path check. Preemption negative run against a one-fetch official sweep of AS Title 29 (Municipal Government, chs. 29.10-29.71 including 29.35 powers and 29.40 planning): zero rent-control or landlord-tenant provisions. Legislative check 2026-07-11 on official BASIS: all 97 bills passed by the 34th Legislature (2025-2026, status dates through 2026-07-09) enumerated - none on-topic (SB 50, Ch. 19 SLA 25, is municipal comprehensive planning only); full introduced-bill sweep found one pending on-topic bill, HB 115 (90-day rent-increase notice), idle in House State Affairs since 2025-02-26 - flagged, not incorporated.