Should I buy a 5 unit that has two vacancies!?

[Franco Urbaez]

Hello all!

Thanks in advance for the feedback.  I'm looking at a 5 unit apartment building in an area that my realtor tells me is in high demand for rentals.  However the property itself currently has two vacancies.  The numbers look as though it would be very lucrative if it were fully rented or even had just one more tenant.   I'm not particularly concerned with the ability to rent it out, or would be an easy rental to fill as one of the units was recently remodeled but never rented.   

My gut feeling tells me that I'm looking at a great deal here but I don't know if I should buy my first investment property on a building with a 60% occupancy rate.  The reason that the owner is selling is because she inherited the building upon her mother's death.  The current owner now has no desire to be a landlord or property owner, so she's selling.   Another notable point is that the owner now owns the deed free and clear so there is no outstanding mortgage obligation to her.

The last thing is that the building had been on the market for over a year and was originally listed for 149K and she has been methodically reducing the list price by 10K every 3 months.  It's now listed for 115K.

Should I buy the property if everything checks out, even though it's currently missing two tenants?