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Free edition
The Rent Hacker
SF East Bay, CA · July 15, 2026
5,640 listings scanned · 246 passed screen
· 76
beat the S&P 500
We scan ~5500 listings weekly so you don’t have to.
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This week, our screen ran across 6 ZIPs
in East Bay. The funnel:
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Active listings, East Bay metro
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5,640
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Passed market-research screen
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246
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Beat S&P 500 (cautious assumptions)
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76
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This week's top 5
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5
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Assumptions: 3% down, 2-year owner-occupy, then full rental. 10-year
hold vs S&P 500 total return.
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This week, two of our strongest-looking new listings, a
duplex on 43rd St and one on Martin Luther King Jr Way, both
got pulled at the verification gate. RentCast's data modeled
them as a fourplex and a triplex; Zillow's actual listing
text said duplex both times. Correctly priced, the S&P beat
them outright. That's the whole point of the gate: a wrong
unit count can turn a loser into a paper winner, and we'd
rather ship five verified deals than ten unverified ones.
— Danny Brown, founder · danny@therenthacker.com
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What changed this week
Exits
827 34th Ave, last week's #1 pick, is off the market per
Zillow with no pending or sold record showing, status
unverified pending the next confirmed listing update.
Debuts
A 1943 Bushrod/Longfellow fourplex cracks the board at #1,
the metro's highest-margin pick.
Its twin next door debuts at #2.
The cheapest entry point in this week's report debuts at #3.
A fully-vacant fourplex debuts at #5, delivered with no
tenant transitions to manage.
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★ Pick #5 · Unlocked for free readers
5315 Cole St, Oakland, CA 94601
Fruitvale Transit Village corridor · 94601
$617,000 · 4 bd / 6
ba · 2,762 sqft · built 1915
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Wealth advantage · 10 years
+$581,702
vs S&P 500 · S&P would need 15.8%/yr
for 10 years to match
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Strategy
Live in one unit, rent the other three
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Financing
Owner-occupied at 3% down
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Live-in rent
$5,100/mo
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Full rental
$6,800/mo
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Renter pool
Service and healthcare workforce
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Catalyst
Fruitvale BART station (1.39 mi)
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The case, and the catch
This Fruitvale Transit Village corridor fourplex is delivered
fully vacant — no tenant transitions, no inherited leases, just four
self-contained units ready to fill. Renting three units covers a
conservative $5,100/mo while you live in the fourth, and the
deal clears a 15.8% S&P hurdle even 1.39 miles from
Fruitvale BART, outside the tightest transit radius.
5315 Cole St is delivered fully vacant. No tenants to inherit, no
leases to untangle, but also no rent collected until you lease up all
four units. Our conservative case assumes near-immediate fill at
$1,700/mo per unit; a slower lease-up compresses the modeled $581,702
margin fast. We also caught a real error here: RentCast's feed had
this listed at $650,000, but Zillow's actual asking price is
$617,000, a $33K gap that would have understated the margin had we
not re-verified it at the gate. Read the full methodology link before
treating either number as gospel. The model's at therenthacker.com/methodology
if you want to challenge any of the inputs.
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Why pick #5 is the free unlock
Pick #5 is guessable from the free issue: Fruitvale ZIP,
fourplex, sub-$650K. What the paid issue carries this week
that free doesn't: the two near-miss duplexes we caught and
killed before they shipped, and the full sensitivity range on
every published pick.
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Deals #1 – #4 this week · paid only
The top 4 ranked deals are behind the paywall
You unlocked #5 above. Each of the 4
below clears a wider S&P delta than your
free pick. Addresses and breakeven math locked.
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Two of this week's five board picks are twin fourplexes in Bushrod /
Longfellow, both within half a mile of MacArthur BART and the $1.6B
UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital rebuild.
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Get this week's full report
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76 deals cleared this week. Here’s the shape
of the pool you’re getting:
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Median price
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$594,500
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Median S&P breakeven
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11.5%
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Median margin vs S&P
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$128,710
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By units
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14 × 1 unit (18%) · 38 × 2 units (50%) · 7 × 3
units (9%) · 17 × 4+ units (22%)
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5 ranked deals: every correction we made, and every number we
couldn't verify.
Get the full report on the 5 strongest of the 76
deals that cleared the cautious-case S&P
benchmark this week: address, price, and stats verified
against the live listing, the cautious rent math behind every
number, downside-to-best-case sensitivity on the top three,
and one-click calculator imports to re-run every assumption
yourself. Refund the first two issues if they don’t pay back
the $29. Reply with the word ‘refund’ and a human reads it
the same day.
Subscribe
· $29/mo, first two refundable →
$29/mo · cancel anytime
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This week's 6 ZIPs
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94601
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Oakland (Fruitvale) · SB 79 upzoning, Tempo BRT spine
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94520
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Concord · Dual BART Yellow Line, $6B CNWS Gateway reuse
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94607
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Oakland (West Oakland) · Mandela Station 762-unit TOD
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94609
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Oakland (North Oakland) · MacArthur BART TOD, $1.6B UCSF
rebuild
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94577
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San Leandro · BART/Tempo terminus, zero winners this week
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94801
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Richmond · BART/Amtrak terminus, 12-story Macdonald upzone
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Every figure uses cautious rent estimates backed by documented comps
and computed distances to named growth catalysts. No invented
numbers. No hype. This is not investment advice.
Know someone hunting for East Bay deals?
Forward
this — they can pick their region at
therenthacker.com.
The Rent Hacker · SF East Bay, CA · July 15,
2026
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