united-states landlord tenant lease
I&#39;m giving my landlord an oven. How do we word the next lease?
<p>I rent an apartment in Anchorage, Alaska.  I applied for covid relief rental assistance. I was approved and the assistance I will be receiving is much more than I expected.  My landlord has no objections to me making some improvements and replacing the oven with a better one.</p>
<p>What phrasing is appropriate in my lease for this? Basically, I want all future rent and rent increases to be commensurate with the rent I am paying now, before I make the improvements?</p>

<p>We don't give specific legal advice and one might VTC, but I think your phrasing is not quite right, and you are just curious about the possibility of binding the landlord to a term across leases.</p>
<p>The first thing that a term in a contract has to so is say exactly what must be done by whom (or not done). You need to describe more precisely what it means for all future rent and rent increases to be commensurate with the current rent. You can think of conditions like &quot;no more than 2% per annum&quot; or &quot;no more than 15% per annum&quot;, and then you can figure out what number is acceptable to the two of you. I would be surprised if you could come up with an agreeable number.</p>
<p>Second, you'd have to make this limit &quot;perpetual&quot;, which is pretty much impossible. You <em>could</em> negotiate the terms of the next lease today which would prevent an increase of rent by more thay you're happy with, but until governmental controls say exactly what a legal rent increase is, the property owner has the right to raise the rent by a million dollars, and you have the right to move elsewhere. It's as hard to permanently lock a landlord into an arrangement as it is to lock a tenant into renting a specific residence. Every year, you have the right to terminate the lease if the rent goes too high for you, and every year the landlord has the right to raise the rent if the current arrangement isn't sufficiently profitable.</p>
<p>Incidentally, you might want to check with <a href="https://www.alaskahousingrelief.org/resources/ahfc-safety-net-program" rel="nofollow noreferrer">AHFC</a> to see if you can actually do this. Your expectations don't determine what relief they provide, just make sure that you provided accurate answers to their questions and reported all income that you're required to report.</p>
