|
Free edition
The Rent Hacker
SF Peninsula, CA · July 9, 2026
142 listings scanned · 112 passed screen
· 15
beat the S&P 500
We scan a few hundred listings weekly so you don’t
have to.
|
|
This week, our screen ran across 4 ZIPs
in Peninsula. The funnel:
|
Active listings, Peninsula metro
|
142
|
|
Passed market-research screen
|
112
|
|
Beat S&P 500 (cautious assumptions)
|
15
|
|
This week's top 5
|
5
|
Assumptions: 3% down, 2-year owner-occupy, then full rental. 10-year
hold vs S&P 500 total return.
|
Our top pick almost shipped with the wrong rent. The pipeline
read it as a fourplex from its bath count, and the listing
agreed — but as two 2-beds and two 1-beds, not four equal
units. Assume the owner keeps a 2-bed, and the three rented
units bring in about $400 a month less than we had modeled.
The headline breakeven dropped two-tenths of a point. I would
rather publish the smaller number and show you the
arithmetic.
— Danny Brown, founder · danny@therenthacker.com
|
|
|
★ Pick #5 · Unlocked for free readers
610 Hilton St, Unit 9
Downtown Redwood City · 94063
$645,000 · 2 bd / 1.5
ba · 954 sqft · built 1991 ·
39d on market
|
|
Wealth advantage · 10 years
+$4K
vs S&P 500 · S&P would need 10.1%/yr
for 10 years to match
|
|
Strategy
Rent the whole house after you move out
|
Financing
Owner-occupied at 3% down
|
|
Rental income
$3,300/mo
|
Appreciation
3.5%/yr
|
|
Renter pool
Transit-commuting professionals / Downtown workforce
|
Catalyst
San Mateo County government center + Box HQ (0.39 mi)
|
Why this is a steal
The narrowest deal we're publishing — and it still wins. A 2-bed
townhouse in Downtown Redwood City at $645K, our
cheapest pick, a short walk from the county government center and Box
HQ (0.39 mi), and ~0.5 mi to the electrified Caltrain that
reaches SF in 33 minutes. Live in it, then rent it whole at
$3,300/mo; after the $210/mo HOA and at our most
cautious rent, it still beats the S&P by $3,904. If even our
slimmest published deal clears the market, the locked ones clearly
do.
610 Hilton is the thinnest deal we published: at our cautious rents
it beats the S&P by $3,904 over ten years, about $33 a month. Two
things break it. Raise the $210 HOA by $25 and the S&P wins. Let the
whole-home rent settle at $3,200 instead of $3,300 and the S&P wins
by $10,430. Our editor also flagged that 94063's knowledge base
predates our hazard-disclosure standard, so flood and fire exposure
here is unverified rather than cleared. We published it anyway. A
margin this thin is the most useful thing in the issue — it shows you
exactly where our screen stops working. 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 free unlock: ZIP, property type, and price
band, all here. The paid issue carries the surgery. We cut
#1's live-in rent by $400 a month once the listing showed two
2-beds and two 1-beds rather than four equal units, and we
moved #3's catalyst from 0.33 miles to 0.50 after re-running
the distance ourselves. You see the picks; paid subscribers
see what changed and why.
|
|
|
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.
|
★ #1 · Top deal
1962 fourplex · Middlefield Junction corridor
🔒 price · address · rent math · S&P delta · breakeven
+$500K – $600K
|
#2
1965 fixer · Woodland Park redevelopment
🔒 price · address · rent math · S&P delta · breakeven
+$0K – $100K
|
#3
1951 4-bed · Ravenswood / 4 Corners TOD
🔒 price · address · rent math · S&P delta · breakeven
+$0K – $100K
|
#4
1912 character home · Daly City BART
🔒 price · address · rent math · S&P delta · breakeven
+$0K – $100K
|
All five picks sit within a mile of a funded transit or redevelopment
catalyst — the two East Palo Alto deals within roughly a half-mile of
the Ravenswood and Woodland Park pipelines.
|
|
Get this week's full report
|
15 deals cleared this week. Here’s the shape
of the pool you’re getting:
|
|
Median price
|
$975,000
|
|
Median S&P breakeven
|
12.0%
|
|
Median margin vs S&P
|
$131,847
|
|
By units
|
13 × 1 unit (87%) · 1 × 2 units (7%) · 1 × 4+
units (7%)
|
|
5 ranked deals, every number verified.
Get the full report on the 5 strongest of the 15
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 · first issue free if you forward
this
|
|
|
This week's 4 ZIPs
|
94063
|
Redwood City · $155M Middlefield Junction under construction,
~69% renter
|
|
94014
|
Daly City · ~15–20 min by BART to SF, cheapest San Mateo
foothold
|
|
94080
|
South San Francisco · East-of-101 biotech, Grand Boulevard El
Camino upzoning
|
|
94303
|
East Palo Alto · ~1.2 mi to Meta, ~1,300 funded Woodland Park
units
|
|
|
Every figure uses cautious rent estimates backed by documented comps
and computed distances to named growth catalysts. No invented
numbers. No hype.
Know someone hunting for a Peninsula deal?
Forward
this — they get a free first issue.
The Rent Hacker · SF Peninsula, CA · July 9,
2026
Manage regions ·
Unsubscribe
|
|
|