Imagine renting an apartment, and your lease is almost up. If the landlord increased your rent, would you continue living there or move out?

In this story, one person is in that situation, and they decide to move out. However, the landlord tries to convince them to pay for one more month’s rent.

Keep reading to see the clever way the renter responds.

I should’ve read the lease? Well you should’ve read the law!

It was coming up on renewal time, and my landlord had just sent renewal paperwork with a big rent increase.

Knowing I could find a cheaper place nearby, I sent in my written notice to vacate, which was required 60 days before my move out date.

The landlord rejected my notice, and told me that if I read the lease I would know that notice to vacate was required 60 days before the first day of the month that I wanted to move out, not 60 days before the move out day itself.

As a result, they were going to force me to submit a new notice the following month and pay an extra months rent (at the new higher rate).

The landlord was right, but he had overlooked an important law.

I was offended by their attitude, but accepted that they had won – at least until I checked the lease against local rental law.

While they were right about the required date of my notice to vacate, they had failed to send me notice of rent increase on time, because I was supposed to have a minimum of 2 weeks AFTER receiving their notice of rent increase to put in my notice to leave at the end of my original lease term!

I wrote back to them with a screenshot of the relevant city law and said “while you are correct about the due date of my notice to vacate, you also failed to send me timely notice of rent increase. You can’t require me to send you notice to vacate at the end of my lease term before knowing how much you will be raising rent! So how do you plan to remedy your breach of the lease?”

After what must have been a tense call with their lawyer, my landlord agreed to accept my original notice and let me move out on the day I planned. Since I had already paid my last months rent, they never got another cent from me!

It’s a good thing OP did some research! He got exactly what he wanted, and there was nothing the landlord could do about it.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

One person shares how they handled a rent increase.

Another person hates tricky landlords.

Here’s a good question.

I’m sure they would’ve increased the rent eventually.

The law trumps the contract.

If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.