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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.
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This week, our screen ran across 11 ZIPs
in San Francisco. The funnel:
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Active listings, San Francisco metro
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867
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Passed market-research screen
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212
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Beat S&P 500 (cautious assumptions)
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43
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This week's top 5
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5
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Assumptions: 3% down, 2-year owner-occupy, then full rental. 10-year
hold vs S&P 500 total return.
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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
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★ 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
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Wealth advantage · 10 years
+$118,323
vs S&P 500 · S&P would need 11.7%/yr
for 10 years to match
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Strategy
Live in one unit, rent the other two
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Financing
Owner-occupied at 3% down
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Live-in rent
$5,400/mo
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Full rental
$8,400/mo
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Renter pool
Immigrant families / CCSF students / downtown commuters
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Catalyst
Balboa Park BART/Muni (0.45 mi)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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★ #1 · Top deal
Duplex · 24th St Mission BART corridor
🔒 price · address · rent math · S&P delta · breakeven
+$700K – $800K
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#2
Triplex · 16th St Mission BART corridor
🔒 price · address · rent math · S&P delta · breakeven
+$600K – $700K
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#3
Triplex · Bayview T-Third corridor
🔒 price · address · rent math · S&P delta · breakeven
+$600K – $700K
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#4
Fourplex · Inner Richmond / Geary BRT
🔒 price · address · rent math · S&P delta · breakeven
+$500K – $600K
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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.
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Get this week's full report
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43 deals cleared this week. Here’s the shape
of the pool you’re getting:
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Median price
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$1,200,000
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Median S&P breakeven
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13.3%
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Median margin vs S&P
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$206,153
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By units
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12 × 1 unit (28%) · 10 × 2 units (23%) · 9 × 3
units (21%) · 12 × 4+ units (28%)
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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 →
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this
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This week's 4 ZIPs
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94112
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Excelsior · Balboa Park BART + City College, below-median
$1.18M entry
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94110
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The Mission · two BART stations, +22% YoY rents, deepest
Edwardian stock
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94124
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Bayview · T-Third light rail on the metro's lowest price basis
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94118
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Inner Richmond · UCSF/USF workforce, Geary BRT Phase 2, tight
3% vacancy
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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
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