California E&S Insurance

[Landlord US-CA] 1st triplex purchase, existing tenants - red flags to look for on lease? Putting in our 1st offer as an LLC. It's an older triplex in a city without its own rent control ordinance, but would be subject to California's 5% + CPI per year. Some problems we've run into: nobody will insure pre-1900 buildings in this town because the few companies that do are "maxed out" in this county and not taking new clients (despite NOT being in a wildfire, flood, or weather hazard zone). So, our insurance will cost 4x what the current building owner is paying. The rents for the current tenants are about 20% below Fair Market Rate for the city (and this is one of the more affordable cities in northern california), and these are nice, spacious apartments in a good neighborhood of well-kept SFHs. So, I am nervous about a few things. Can we ask for a rental history, to see if the tenants are used to having their rent raised at ALL each year? I'd feel better if the current landlord was raising it by CPI or *something*, with all the costs ballooning right now. It will take a few years to get up to fair market rent, and if current tenants vacated the units would *definitely* rent for more than that, since these are gigantic units in a desirable locale and we plan to allow cats or small dogs (very rare here) for new tenants if they have renters insurance. The current owner bought in 2001. The current tenants seem totally fine, but unfortunately the rents are just not realistic for current insurance etc costs, so we'd need to raise them by at least 5% each year until they were more in line with fair market rates. What red flags should I look for in the existing leases? As I understand it, California lets a landlord raise the rent each year even on a lease that's longer than a year? At least, I know as a commercial tenant on a 10-year lease ours is raised the maximum amount every year despite the lease. Do leases ever have provisions where rent can *not* be raised during the lease period? Do they need to specifically state that the rent *can* be raised by 5% + CPI, or is that implicit unless stated otherwise in California? Thanks for any help w/ this or other red flags!

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  "score": 0,
  "title": "[Landlord US-CA] 1st triplex purchase, existing tenants - red flags to look for on lease?",
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