Sneaky Renter Edits Lease, Requiring Landlord To Provide Something Very Important

And this is why NO ONE should ever do a contract in Word!

We’ve all heard the horror stories of being a landlord, but this one takes the cake (quite literally).

You see, a good rule of thumb is to always read a lease before signing it…

…and one landlord learned that the hard (and hilarious) way.

In this case, the landlord sent a lease to his tenant as a Word document, not a PDF, making the document editable.

D’oh!

That tenant (who goes by the screen name “Glorious Gherkins”on Reddit) was smart enough to catch his landlord’s mistake and capitalized on it by adding a “cake clause” to the lease.

This is a hard lesson in knowing the difference between a PDF and a word doc.

Now some will question the legality of adding a “cake clause” to your lease (or why you opted for cake instead of punch and pie), especially the landlord’s lawyers. Many Reddit users have already voiced their disdain for the legality of the tenant’s move, or are flat-out deriding them for adjusting the lease in the first place.

The tenant has said that he’ll hold his landlord to the adjusted lease. The landlord, we’re assuming, is making sure to get the chocolate cake with the whipped frosting trying to be a good sport. Let’s hope everyone in this situation plays nice. Let’s also hope the landlord sends all future communication in PDF format lest he be required to provide jugglers and a bouncy house for his tenant next year.

Denise Frank, Hometown Realtors of Texas