Inherited tenants at market rent are an asset. Tenants locked far below market can be a problem you never get to fix. If the tenants already pay market rent with a clean payment history, inheriting them removes vacancy risk and lets you underwrite on real numbers. If the rents sit well below market, slow down, because your ability to raise them is limited by state and local law. In tenant-friendly states like California, annual increase caps can make it very hard to bring a unit back to market. On a four-unit property we manage in Santa Ana, three units are at market rent while the fourth is capped near a few percent a year, and realistically that unit will never fully catch up. Before you sign: - Pull the rent roll and confirm each tenant's actual payment history. - Get copies of the leases and any addendums. - Price the building on the rents you can actually collect, not the rents a pro forma assumes. The broader landlording lesson: be cautious about ever letting a tenant's rent drift far below market, because rent-control pressure and possible future limits on evictions (even for a remodel) can make that unit effectively impossible to reset later. Local rent and eviction rules change, so confirm the current statutes in the property's jurisdiction before you count on any increase.