Free edition The Rent Hacker SF Peninsula, CA · July 30, 2026 936 listings scanned · 332 passed screen · 12 beat the S&P 500 We scan a few hundred listings weekly so you don’t have to. |
This week, our screen ran across 2 ZIPs in Peninsula. The funnel: | Active listings, Peninsula metro | 936 | | Passed market-research screen | 332 | | Cleared S&P 500 on paper | 12 | | This week's top 4 | 4 |
Assumptions: 3.5% down (FHA floor), 2-year owner-occupy, then full rental. 10-year hold vs S&P 500 total return. This week the pipeline handed me three "winners" in the same South San Francisco building, priced from $136K to $1.4M for the identical floor plan. That is a dead giveaway they were below-market-rate units you can't legally rent out. All three got killed, along with an auction listing and two homes whose real unit counts didn't match the model once I pulled the actual listings. What's left is four deals I'd underwrite myself: three fourplexes and a home with a permitted ADU, each clearing the S&P 500 at rents I'd bet on rather than hope for. — Danny Brown, founder · danny@therenthacker.com |
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What changed this week Exits Last week's #1, 1164 Clinton St, went pending on July 13 after debuting at $601K modeled margin, a fast contract on a Woodside Plaza listing. 57 Dumbarton Ave also went pending (July 24), flagged at $551K modeled margin when we picked it. 2338 Dumbarton Ave, a three-time standing pick, went pending July 24 at $216K modeled margin. It was the third of our East Palo Alto board picks to go under contract. Price cuts Standing pick 345 1st Ave cut $78K to $697K in week two, but at the lower price this 790 sq ft single-family fixer now underwrites just under the S&P at cautious rents. It keeps its board slot and steps out of this week's featured deals. Debuts 94063 added 8 new listings this week; a Friendly Acres fourplex asking $2.03M debuts on the board at #2, clearing the S&P by nearly $400K at cautious rents. |
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★ Pick #4 · Unlocked for free readers 1664 Tulane Ave Woodland Park · 94303 $1,019,888 · 4 bd / 2 ba · 1,456 sqft · built 1953 |
Wealth advantage · 10 years +$69,050 vs S&P 500 · S&P would need 11.0%/yr for 10 years to match |
Strategy Rent out spare bedrooms while you live there | Financing Owner-occupied at 3.5% down | Live-in rent $4,100/mo | Full rental $5,100/mo | Renter pool Tech-adjacent workforce / transit commuters | Catalyst Woodland Park redevelopment district (0.88 mi) |
The case, and the catch Rent the spare bedrooms in this four-bed Woodland Park home for $4,100/mo while you live there; once you move out, the whole house rents for $5,100/mo. The S&P would need 11.0% returns to beat it, and the property sits 0.88 mi from the funded Woodland Park redevelopment pipeline of about 1,300 units. 1664 Tulane Avenue is this week's free unlock, and it's the closest call on the board. It's a $1.02M East Palo Alto home we modeled the cautious way, renting spare bedrooms while you live in it rather than betting on the permitted ADU's top-of-band rent. At our most cautious rents it clears the S&P 500 by about $69,000 over ten years, the thinnest margin we published. The risk that breaks it is rent itself: East Palo Alto's rent stabilization can cap what that second unit earns, and the home has sat 59 days on market, so the price may still have room to move. If the achievable rent lands a few hundred dollars light, the $69K cushion compresses toward zero. We published it because even underwritten conservatively it still wins, and the flashier cheap listings above it did not survive that same test. The model's at therenthacker.com/methodology if you want to challenge any of the inputs. Why pick #4 is the free unlock Pick #4 is the free unlock because it's the smallest edge we found. You can already see the ZIP, the price band, and that it leans on an accessory unit. The paid issue carries the three deals above it: two Redwood City fourplexes and an East Palo Alto fourplex, each clearing the S&P by a quarter-million to over half a million dollars at cautious rents, plus the four "cheap winners" we killed this week and exactly why. |
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Deals #1 – #3 this week · paid only The top 3 ranked deals are behind the paywall You unlocked #4 above. Each of the 3 below clears a wider S&P delta than your free pick. Addresses and breakeven math locked. |
Two of this week's picks are Friendly Acres fourplexes in Redwood City, both within about a mile of the same $155M Middlefield Junction redevelopment. |
Get this week's full report 4 deals cleared this week. Here's the shape of the pool you're getting: | | Median price | $1,109,944 | | Median S&P breakeven | 11.9% | | Median margin vs S&P | $117,909 | | By units | 3 × 1 unit (25%) · 4 × 2 units (33%) · 1 × 3 units (8%) · 4 × 4+ units (33%) |
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4 ranked deals: every correction we made, and every number we couldn't verify. Get the full report on all 4 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 2 ZIPs | 94303 | East Palo Alto · Meta-adjacent, 1,300-unit Woodland Park pipeline | | 94063 | Redwood City · Middlefield Junction under construction, 69% renter base |
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The Peninsula house-hacking guide is live |
We've published a standing guide to house-hacking the Peninsula, the strategy behind these weekly picks, from fourplexes in Redwood City to ADUs in East Palo Alto. Bookmark it if you're hunting anywhere from Daly City to San Carlos. Read the Peninsula guide |
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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 Peninsula deals? Forward this — they can pick their region at therenthacker.com. The Rent Hacker · SF Peninsula, CA · July 30, 2026 Manage regions · Unsubscribe |
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