Free edition The Rent Hacker SF North Bay, CA · August 10, 2026 4,355 active listings · 755 screened · 79 beat the S&P 500 We screened 755 of the region’s 4,355 active listings this week so you don’t have to. |
This week, our screen ran across 11 ZIPs in North Bay. The funnel: | Active listings, North Bay metro | 4,355 | | Screened (market research) | 755 | | Cleared S&P 500 on paper | 79 | | 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. This week I nearly put a Santa Rosa listing in front of you that claimed four bedrooms in 660 square feet. Both of our data sources agreed on it, which is how it got as far as it did. Nobody builds a four-bedroom house the size of a two-car garage. It did not ship because we check a property's dimensions against each other before we trust its math. The math was fine. The house was not. — Danny Brown, founder · danny@therenthacker.com |
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What changed this week The board held, but the lineup changed. Four of last week's five picks are back. The fifth, 630 York St, is not: our data feed stopped reporting it, and when we went and looked, it was still for sale at $720,000. So it stays on the board as an open pick and we record no exit. Its slot goes to 12 Daniels Ave, which we ran in July, left out last week, and bring back at #5. No listing exited the market this week and no board pick moved on price. Since the board itself held, here is the rent stack under the #5. 12 Daniels is four 2-bedroom units in a 1924 building, and we price each one at $1,600, the lower-level 2-bedroom row in our Vallejo framework, not the $2,300 a detached 2-bedroom house rents for in the same ZIP. A unit inside a fourplex is not a house, and pricing it like one is the easiest way to make a weak deal look strong. Three units at $1,600 is the $4,800/mo on the card. |
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★ Pick #5 · Unlocked for free readers · Week 3 on the board 12 Daniels Ave Downtown Vallejo (Historic Core) · 94590 $950,000 · 8 bd / 4 ba · 3,300 sqft · built 1924 · 172d on market |
Wealth advantage · 10 years +$279,719 vs S&P 500 · S&P would need 13.0%/yr for 10 years to match |
Strategy Live in one unit, rent the other three | Financing Owner-occupied at 3.5% down | Live-in rent $4,800/mo | Full rental $6,400/mo | Renter pool Ferry commuters / SF-priced-out workforce | Catalyst Vallejo Ferry Terminal (1.06 mi) |
The case, and the catch A 1924 fourplex of 2-bedroom units, 1.06 miles from the Vallejo Ferry Terminal and its one-seat commute into downtown San Francisco. It has been on the market 172 days, which is long enough to write an offer that reflects it; the likeliest read is seller pricing resistance on a hundred-year-old building, but verify condition at inspection before you assume that is all it is. Three rented units bring $4,800/mo while you take the fourth, and our cautious case already charges $15,000 of first-year repairs. 12 Daniels Ave has been listed 172 days, and that is the number to sit with. Our cautious case reads it as seller pricing resistance on a 1924 building and already charges $15,000 of first-year repairs. But 172 days can also mean something an inspection finds that a listing photo does not. The whole case rests on three units renting at $1,600 each. If the real number is $1,400, the cautious margin falls from $279,719 to $134,129 and the breakeven from 13.0% to 11.5%. Still ahead of the index, on less than half the cushion. Tour it before you believe the rent. The model's at therenthacker.com/methodology if you want to challenge any of the inputs. Why pick #5 is the free unlock 12 Daniels is the free unlock because it is the thinnest of the five, and you can already infer the shape of the rest: Vallejo and Fairfield, fourplexes and duplexes, from the mid four hundreds to just under a million. What you cannot infer is which two of the locked four are marketed inside a twelve-unit portfolio that would void the owner-occupancy math, or which one is delivered fully vacant and sold as-is. |
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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. |
Vallejo's two ZIPs produced 42 of the 79 that beat the index this week, and the strongest of them sit within half a mile of the same downtown upzone corridor. |
Get this week's full report 5 deals made this week's board, out of 79 that beat the index on paper. Here's the shape of that pool: | | Median price | $489,950 | | Median S&P breakeven | 10.5% | | Median margin vs S&P | $47,875 | | By units | 31 × 1 unit (39%) · 35 × 2 units (44%) · 4 × 3 units (5%) · 9 × 4+ units (11%) |
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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 11 ZIPs | 94590 | Vallejo · Ferry one-seat SF commute, DVSP upzone, cheap 4-unit stock | | 94533 | Fairfield · Travis AFB workforce, $10M Complete Streets under construction | | 94589 | Vallejo (north) · SR-37 diverging diamond open July, Kaiser in-ZIP | | 95407 | Santa Rosa (Roseland) · jobs importer, Tierra de Rosas redevelopment | | 95404 | Santa Rosa · SMART downtown stop, DSASP + Missing Middle overlay | | 95688 | Vacaville · $38.4M interchange, Genentech/Kaiser anchors | | 94928 | Rohnert Park · SMART station, funded Station Avenue TOD, SSU demand | | 94559 | Napa · 51.9% renters, First Street Phase II, flood-gate diligence | | 95492 | Windsor · SMART station, Shiloh Business Park build-out | | 94585 | Suisun City · Capitol Corridor rail, Marina Village delivered | | 94949 | Novato (Hamilton) · SMART station, BioMarin/Ultragenyx, $1.55M median |
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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 North Bay deals? Forward this — they can pick their region at therenthacker.com. The Rent Hacker · SF North Bay, CA · August 10, 2026 Manage regions · Unsubscribe |
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