I inherited tenants and the landlords shifty ways. question/rant

[Nick Bleser]

We recently bought a 8-plex and the transfer was a mess. This was partially due to our inexperience and a landlord that was way too loose in my opinion.

Before I explain here's my question:

Should I contact the previous landlord because I think we were shorted 1 tenants security deposit. We've owned the property for 2 months or should we eat the cost and learn from our mistakes.

Here's the confusion. Before we purchased the property the security deposit situation was very hazy. We were never given a solid number on how much would be transferred. I later learned the listing agent was not asking the landlord and was just guessing by looking at the messy leases. We later found out that for some move-ins the landlord would allow tenants to not pay security deposits if they cleaned and prepped the units. 

So the day of closing we were still guessing at what was owed. It also didn't help the seller decided to take vacation this week(unbeknown to us they pre-signed). We ended up forcing the seller to meet us the day we signed and we sat in the parking lot adding up what was owed. It was a total **** show! What was so confusing was we closed on the 1st of the month so some rent was paid some wasn't some tenants had security deposits some didn't. I have never been so confused by simple math in my life.

After all this we thought we had everything correctly accounted for. Now it turns out we didn't. A tenant we thought didn't have a security deposit in fact does. They proved it with a receipt.

Again, my question is should we eat the cost or should I go back to the previous owner and ask for the deposit?

Thanks BP!