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Free edition
The Rent Hacker
SF Proper, CA · July 14, 2026
881 listings scanned · 243 passed screen
· 19
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 12 ZIPs
in San Francisco. The funnel:
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Active listings, San Francisco metro
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881
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Passed market-research screen
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243
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Beat S&P 500 (cautious assumptions)
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19
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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 lesson: when a San Francisco listing looks a
third under market, the discount is usually a legal
constraint the data feed can't see. TIC financing, BMR deed
restrictions, protected tenancy. We caught three of them this
week by reading the listings instead of trusting the
aggregate data, and that check is why the published margins
survive scrutiny.
— Danny Brown, founder · danny@therenthacker.com
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What changed this week
Exits
Last week's #1 pick, 28 27th St, went pending 8
days after we published it. It had sat 43 days on market
before that. A buyer is under contract, and the contract
price stays unknown until close, so we can't grade it yet. We
flagged it at a $779,598 modeled margin; it moves to
the graded list when the sale closes. The public track record
started this month, and this is its first exit.
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★ Pick #5 · Unlocked for free readers
· Week 2 on the board
70 Onondaga Ave
Cayuga Terrace / Alemany corridor · 94112
$1,320,000 · 5 bd / 4
ba · 2,805 sqft · built 1958
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Wealth advantage · 10 years
+$263,604
vs S&P 500 · S&P would need 13.5%/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
$6,400/mo
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Full rental
$8,800/mo
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Renter pool
Local service-workforce households / City College students
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Catalyst
Balboa Park BART / Muni Metro station (0.45 mi)
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The case, and the catch
A 3-unit at $1,320,000 in Cayuga Terrace / Alemany
corridor, under half a mile from Balboa Park BART: 144
days on market and back for a second week on the board. Rent the
other two units for $6,400/mo while you live in the third; it
sits in the Alemany/Islais Creek valley-floor liquefaction pocket, so
order an NHD report before underwriting. The S&P still needs 13.5%
annual returns to match it at the cautious estimate.
70 Onondaga Ave sits in the Alemany/Islais Creek valley-floor
liquefaction pocket the ZIP's own hazard review flags, and it's sat
on the market 144 days, the longest of any pick this week. Order a
natural-hazard disclosure report before underwriting; that exposure
isn't in our model. Here's the honest math: erasing the modeled
$263,604 margin over the ten-year hold, after accounting for the
return that money would otherwise earn at the model's 10% index rate,
takes roughly $16,500 a year in unmodeled carrying cost. Standard SF
insurance for a 2-4 unit building already runs $5,280 to $10,560 a
year at 0.4% to 0.8% of value, covering up to about two-thirds of
that break-even number on its own. It's also a 3-unit building, so
turnover increases on the rented units are CPI-capped, roughly 1.4%
to 2.3% a year. 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 guess pick #5's ZIP and price band from the modeled
numbers alone. What only the paid issue carries this week is
the kill list: three suspiciously cheap listings died at
verification, including a mis-ZIP'd TIC with a protected
tenant at $1,622 a month and a MOHCD unit with both rent and
resale capped. No addresses here.
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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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This week's five picks span four submarkets: Inner Mission, Bayview,
NoPa, and Excelsior, each anchored by a BART station, hospital
campus, or transit corridor.
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Get this week's full report
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19 deals cleared this week. Here’s the shape
of the pool you’re getting:
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Median price
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$1,139,000
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Median S&P breakeven
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12.6%
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Median margin vs S&P
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$190,598
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By units
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5 × 1 unit (26%) · 8 × 2 units (42%) · 5 × 3
units (26%) · 1 × 4+ units (5%)
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5 ranked deals: every correction we made, and every number we
couldn't verify.
Get the full report on the 5 strongest of the 19
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
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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 anchor
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94110
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Mission District · Two BART stations, Zuckerberg SF General
anchor
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94124
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Bayview · T-Third light rail, lowest inner-SF basis
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94117
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NoPa/Haight · UCSF Parnassus $4.3B expansion walk-shed
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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. This is not investment advice.
Know someone hunting for a San Francisco deal?
Forward
this and they get a free first issue.
The Rent Hacker · SF Proper, CA · July 14,
2026
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