|
Free edition
The Rent Hacker
San Francisco, CA · July 6, 2026
867 listings scanned · 212 passed screen
· 43
beat the S&P 500
We scan a few hundred listings weekly so you don’t
have to.
|
|
This week, our screen ran across 11 ZIPs
in San Francisco. The funnel:
|
Active listings, San Francisco metro
|
867
|
|
Passed market-research screen
|
212
|
|
Beat S&P 500 (cautious assumptions)
|
43
|
|
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.
|
This week's #1 deal looked unreal — until I opened the actual
listing: a 14-unit apartment building the listing feed
had logged as an 8-bedroom house. Two more finalists were a
12-unit and a 6-unit dressed the same way; another was
deed-restricted below-market-rate housing with the
appreciation capped out of it. I killed six of the ten
finalists before they reached you. The five that survived
are deals I'd underwrite myself — every unit count checked
against the live listing, every rent-controlled tenant
flagged.
— Danny Brown, founder · danny@therenthacker.com
|
|
|
★ Pick #5 · Unlocked for free readers
70 Onondaga Ave
Cayuga Terrace / Alemany corridor · 94112
$1,320,000 · 5 bd / 4
ba · 2,805 sqft · built 1958
· 144d on market
|
|
Wealth advantage · 10 years
+$118,323
vs S&P 500 · S&P would need 11.7%/yr
for 10 years to match
|
|
Strategy
Live in one unit, rent the other two
|
Financing
Owner-occupied at 3% down
|
|
Live-in rent
$5,400/mo
|
Full rental
$8,400/mo
|
|
Renter pool
Local service workforce / CCSF students / downtown commuters
|
Catalyst
Balboa Park BART/Muni (0.45 mi)
|
Why this is a steal
This remodeled triplex at 70 Onondaga Ave has sat
144 days — that staleness is your leverage on the week's
lowest-margin pick. Live in the 3-bedroom and rent the two garaged
1-bedrooms for $5,400/mo, but both convey with sitting
tenants, so verify their leases before counting that rent. Even so
the S&P must compound at 11.7%/yr to match. That's a $118K
edge.
Pick #5 — the 70 Onondaga triplex — is the week’s lowest-margin
published deal, and I unlocked it because its risks are the most
instructive. It’s sat 144 days, which is either a red flag or
your negotiating leverage. Both rentable units convey with sitting
tenants under SF rent control, so the $5,400/mo I model depends
on a turnover I can’t promise you’ll get. If those tenants stay at
today’s controlled rents, the conservative $118K edge over the
S&P compresses toward break-even. Verify the leases before you count
the cash flow. The model's at therenthacker.com/methodology
if you want to challenge any of the inputs.
|
Why pick #5 is the free unlock
You can see #5’s ZIP, its triplex layout, and its
sub-$1.4M basis from this free issue. What the paid
edition carries this week: the two deals I almost cut for the
same rent-control trap, and the one Bayview triplex whose
bay-fill soil nearly disqualified it — with the exact
math on which risks I judged survivable.
|
|
|
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
Duplex · 24th St Mission BART corridor
🔒 price · address · rent math · S&P delta · breakeven
+$700K – $800K
|
#2
Triplex · 16th St Mission BART corridor
🔒 price · address · rent math · S&P delta · breakeven
+$600K – $700K
|
#3
Triplex · Bayview T-Third corridor
🔒 price · address · rent math · S&P delta · breakeven
+$600K – $700K
|
#4
Fourplex · Inner Richmond / Geary BRT
🔒 price · address · rent math · S&P delta · breakeven
+$500K – $600K
|
Almost every deal this week sits within a half-mile of BART,
Caltrain, or Muni Metro rail — the transit-demand floor these
house-hacks are underwritten on.
|
|
Get this week's full report
|
43 deals cleared this week. Here’s the shape
of the pool you’re getting:
|
|
Median price
|
$1,200,000
|
|
Median S&P breakeven
|
13.3%
|
|
Median margin vs S&P
|
$206,153
|
|
By units
|
12 × 1 unit (28%) · 10 × 2 units (23%) · 9 × 3
units (21%) · 12 × 4+ units (28%)
|
|
5 ranked deals, every number verified.
Get the full report on the 5 strongest of the 43
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
|
94112
|
Excelsior · Balboa Park BART + City College, below-median
$1.18M entry
|
|
94110
|
The Mission · two BART stations, +22% YoY rents, deepest
Edwardian stock
|
|
94124
|
Bayview · T-Third light rail on the metro's lowest price basis
|
|
94118
|
Inner Richmond · UCSF/USF workforce, Geary BRT Phase 2, tight
3% vacancy
|
|
|
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 San Francisco deal?
Forward
this — they get a free first issue.
The Rent Hacker · San Francisco, CA · July 6,
2026
Manage regions ·
Unsubscribe
|
|
|