Free edition The Rent Hacker SF East Bay, CA · August 12, 2026 5,657 active listings · 417 screened · 81 beat the S&P 500 We screened 417 of the region’s 5,657 active listings this week so you don’t have to. |
This week, our screen ran across 8 ZIPs in East Bay. The funnel: | Active listings, East Bay metro | 5,657 | | Screened (market research) | 417 | | Cleared S&P 500 on paper | 81 | | This week's top 5 | 5 |
Assumptions: 3.5% down (FHA floor), 2-year owner-occupy, then full rental. 10-year hold vs S&P 500 total return. Our editor caught something this week I would rather have caught myself. Six of the ten draft write-ups quoted turnover rents as though they were day-one income, on buildings our own research had already flagged as tenanted under rent control. The math was never wrong. The sentences were. Every card below now says what we know about who is living there, and on the one property where we know nothing, it says that instead. — Danny Brown, founder · danny@therenthacker.com |
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What changed this week Exits Last week's #1, 827 34th Ave, went pending after 16 days on market and two weeks on our board. We flagged it at a $955,579 modeled margin on a $629,500 ask. Pending is not closed, so the final number isn't public yet, but the market moved on it fast. Debuts 38 listings entered our ranked pool for the first time across the six ZIPs we already track, and the strongest of them takes #1 outright: a 1908 fourplex in Richmond BART/Amtrak terminus, a 1908 quadruplex at $999,000 with 12 bedrooms across four units. A 1917 quadruplex in Fruitvale BART corridor debuts at #2. It is a 1917 Fruitvale quadruplex at $879,000, roughly $220K a door, where three rented units carry $6,600/mo at cautious rents. |
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★ Pick #5 · Unlocked for free readers 670 32nd St Pill Hill medical district · 94609 $975,000 · 9 bd / 4 ba · 4,197 sqft · built 1909 · 140d on market |
Wealth advantage · 10 years +$510,042 vs S&P 500 · S&P would need 15.2%/yr for 10 years to match |
Strategy Live in one unit, rent the other two | Financing Owner-occupied at 3.5% down | Live-in rent $6,600/mo | Full rental $8,900/mo | Renter pool Hospital staff / UC Berkeley affiliates | Catalyst MacArthur BART station (0.53 mi) |
The case, and the catch Start with what we don't know: Zillow carries no bed or bath count for this property, and no word on who lives there now. The spec line above reads 9 bd / 4 ba because we inferred it from the seller's own description, and every number on this card rests on that reading. 140 days on market and a $24,000 cut on August 4 put the ask at $975,000, long enough sitting to be worth an offer under it. The listing describes a duplex plus a separate five-bedroom house on one lot and pitches splitting the lot and reselling the house. Whether that split is legally permitted is unverified (a planning-department question before it's a math question), and a 1909 building this size carries real foundation and systems risk. On our reading, two units carry $6,600/mo at cautious rents while you live in the third. Once all three are rented that reaches $8,900/mo. It's 0.53 mi to MacArthur BART, inside Pill Hill's hospital payroll. 670 32nd St is the pick we are showing you in full, and the honest headline is that nobody has measured its bed count. We read the 9 bd / 4 ba off the seller's description. What the capture does verify is the unit count: three, a duplex plus a house, and that bounds the risk. At our reading the margin is $510,042 on a 15.2% breakeven. Shrink the house to three bedrooms and the flats to one bedroom each, the weakest mix our own 94609 rent bands support, and it still clears at $272,171 and 13.0%. The seller also pitches splitting the lot and reselling the house, and whether that split is legally permitted is a planning-department question nobody has answered. The model's at therenthacker.com/methodology if you want to challenge any of the inputs. Why pick #5 is the free unlock Pick #5 is the one we opened up because it is where our confidence is lowest, and you deserve the reasoning as well as the number. Its ZIP and price band are guessable from what you can see. What the paid issue carries this week is the four picks that outrank it, and the sitting-tenant problem that nearly pulled two of them. |
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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. |
Two ZIPs produced 54 of the 81 properties that beat the index this week, and both are built around a BART platform. |
Get this week's full report 5 deals made this week's board, out of 81 that beat the index on paper. Here's the shape of that pool: | | Median price | $594,999 | | Median S&P breakeven | 11.5% | | Median margin vs S&P | $128,965 | | By units | 15 × 1 unit (19%) · 41 × 2 units (51%) · 7 × 3 units (9%) · 18 × 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 all 5 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 8 ZIPs | 94609 | Oakland · UCSF Benioff $1.6B rebuild, MacArthur BART in-ZIP | | 94601 | Oakland · Fruitvale BART + Tempo BRT, 64% renter households | | 94801 | Richmond · BART/Amtrak terminus, Kaiser and Chevron payrolls in-ZIP | | 94607 | Oakland · West Oakland BART 7 min to Embarcadero, Mandela Station funded | | 94520 | Concord · two BART stations, city's cheapest ZIP at ~$610K | | 94577 | San Leandro · BART + Tempo, Kaiser campus 2,100 jobs in-ZIP | | 94553 | Martinez · county seat payroll, Amtrak Capitol Corridor downtown | | 94583 | San Ramon · Bishop Ranch 30,000 jobs, schools ranked #53 statewide |
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Every figure uses cautious rent estimates backed by documented comps and computed distances to named growth catalysts. Property taxes are modeled at each ZIP's median effective rate unless a parcel-verified figure is stated; confirm the actual tax basis with the county before you underwrite. 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 · August 12, 2026 Manage regions · Unsubscribe |
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