My building has a thing where they give you a significantly lower rent increase if you sign another lease instead of going month to month. So when I went to sign another year's lease, there was a typo on the form and it said 2009-20010 instead of 2009-2010. I pointed it out, we all had a giggle and crossed out the extra zero, and I signed a lease until 2010.
It just occurred to me that if I hadn't pointed it out and we'd all signed the document with the typo in it, I'd have in hand a legal document signed by my landlord locking in my rent rate for my lifetime and beyond. Now it's true I might not want to live here for my entire life. However, the rule is that if you leave in the middle of your lease, you don't take any penalty if you can find someone to take over your lease. And I'm sure I could totally find someone who would want a locked-in-for-life rent rate in a rather nice building. They wouldn't have to worry about the excessively long-term lease, because the more time went by the more desirable it would be to pay 2009 rent. Imagine if today you had the opportunity to rent an apartment locked in at 1999 rates! Actually, if I waited 10 or 20 years, I could probably get away with subletting it at a profit, and everyone (except the landlord) would feel like they've won!
But partly because I was honest, partly because my first thought was "OMG, I don't want to sign a legal document with a mistake in it!", we corrected it and I completely missed an opportunity to screw over my landlord and save enormous amounts of money in the long term.
3 comments:
If it makes you feel any better, it's unlikely that a court would have enforced that document in any event - it's clear that the landlord didn't mean 20010, and that would likely make a difference to a judge (regardless of what the document actually says). So you were honest - and at no cost to you!
I was looking for precedent but couldn't find any, at least not with the tools available to me at home.
What Mac said. Unenforceable. Great idea, though.
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