Free edition The Rent Hacker SF Proper, CA · August 4, 2026 859 active listings · 370 screened · 42 beat the S&P 500 We screened 370 of the region’s 859 active listings this week so you don’t have to. |
This week, our screen ran across 19 ZIPs in San Francisco. The funnel: | Active listings, San Francisco metro | 859 | | Screened (market research) | 370 | | Cleared S&P 500 on paper | 42 | | This week's top 5 | 5 |
Assumptions: 3.5% down (FHA floor), 2-year owner-occupy, then full rental. 10-year hold vs S&P 500 total return. Our own filter threw out this week’s best deal. It read the building as nine bedrooms, tripped the cutoff we use to screen out commercial multifamily, and dropped it. It is the same property we published at #2 last week. I caught it because it went missing from the board, not because anything flagged it. It is back at the top of this issue. I would rather tell you the screen has holes than pretend the list arrives clean. — Danny Brown, founder · danny@therenthacker.com |
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What changed this week Price cuts Last week's #3, 1608 Folsom St, cut $125,000 to $1,950,000 after four months on the market. It's off this week's board while we re-underwrite it at the new ask. Debuts A Three-flat Edwardian in Van Ness BRT corridor debuts at #3, clearing the S&P by $1,013,509 at cautious rents. It arrived with 77 new listings across the tracked ZIPs. |
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★ Pick #5 · Unlocked for free readers 519 Natoma St Central SoMa SUD · 94103 $1,598,000 · 4 bd / 4 ba · 3,030 sqft · built 1907 · 87d on market |
Wealth advantage · 10 years +$452,172 vs S&P 500 · S&P would need 16.9%/yr for 10 years to match |
Strategy Live in one unit, rent the other three | Financing Owner-occupied at 3.5% down | Live-in rent $8,700/mo | Full rental $11,600/mo | Renter pool AI-cohort engineers / Convention and museum workforce | Catalyst Central SoMa Special Use District (0.09 mi) |
The case, and the catch Four one-bedroom units in Central SoMa grossing $10,468/mo today. Read the occupancy before the yield: all four units are tenant-occupied, so taking one for yourself is an owner-move-in eviction, not a walk-in. Budget the relocation payment, the protected-tenant screen and the five-year owner-occupancy covenant before you price this. The modeled $8,700/mo from the other three arrives only as those units turn over. 519 Natoma St is the one I argued about longest, and the occupancy is why. The cautious case still clears the S&P by $452,172 over ten years, but that number assumes you get possession on an ordinary timeline. A year of legal delay costs about $104,000 of modeled rent — roughly a fifth of the margin. Good building, hard gate in front of it. 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 probably guess the shape of the other four from the ZIPs above: two multi-unit Mission buildings, a Russian Hill three-flat, all pre-1979, all between $1.1M and $1.9M. What the paid issue carries is which ones we nearly killed and why — including one asking 62% below its ZIP’s price per square foot, where neither the listing nor the rent roll explains the discount. |
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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. |
★ #1 · Top deal · Week 2 on the board Victorian fourplex · 24th St Mission BART 🔒 +$1,488,606 vs the S&P over 10 yrs, cautious case · address + underwriting inside +$1400K – $1500K | #2 · Week 2 on the board Fourplex · Central SoMa upzoning district 🔒 +$881,043 vs the S&P over 10 yrs, cautious case · address + underwriting inside +$800K – $900K | #3 Three-flat Edwardian · Van Ness BRT corridor 🔒 +$1,013,509 vs the S&P over 10 yrs, cautious case · address + underwriting inside +$1000K – $1100K | #4 · Week 5 on the board Three flats · 16th St Mission BART 🔒 +$851,816 vs the S&P over 10 yrs, cautious case · address + underwriting inside +$800K – $900K |
Four of this week’s five picks sit within 0.20 miles of their catalyst: two beside the Mission’s BART and hospital anchors, two inside the Central SoMa upzoning district. |
Get this week's full report 42 deals cleared on paper this week. Here's the shape of the pool the 5 picks came out of: | | Median price | $767,500 | | Median S&P breakeven | 13.7% | | Median margin vs S&P | $257,782 | | By units | 22 × 1 unit (52%) · 11 × 2 units (26%) · 5 × 3 units (12%) · 4 × 4+ units (10%) |
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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 picks we published out of the 42 that cleared our cautious-case S&P benchmark on paper 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 19 ZIPs | 94103 | SoMa · Central SoMa upzoning, Hub towers, cheapest inner-SF condos | | 94109 | Russian Hill · Van Ness BRT, $5-7.2K flats | | 94110 | Mission · ZSFG in-ZIP, dual BART, 5.5% appreciation lane | | 94122 | Sunset · N-Judah corridor, UCSF walk-shed, $5-6.5K SFH | | 94124 | Bayview · T-Third spine, Hunters Point Shipyard, 5.5% appreciation | | 94107 | Potrero / Dogpatch · UCSF Mission Bay, $4.5-5.5K 2BR flats | | 94118 | Inner Richmond · $3-3.4K 2BR flats, Clement St, UCSF Parnassus | | 94112 | Ingleside · Balboa Reservoir 1,100 homes, CCSF, Balboa Park BART | | 94115 | Pac Heights edge · Kaiser + UCSF Mount Zion, credit-strong renters | | 94114 | Noe / Castro · $7-8K SFH, CPMC Davies, garden in-law hacks | | 94117 | NoPa / Cole Valley · Haight-Divisadero upzoning, UCSF Parnassus | | 94134 | Visitacion Valley · lowest SF basis, Sunnydale HOPE SF delivering | | 94121 | Outer Richmond · SF VA anchor, 850 La Playa 562 homes, Geary upzoning | | 94131 | Glen Park · BART portal, 6-8 story upzone amended Dec 2025 | | 94116 | Outer Sunset · L-Taraval rebuild delivered, Taraval corridor upzone | | 94132 | Lake Merced · SFSU 22,000 students, Stonestown 3,419 homes phase 1 | | 94108 | Chinatown / Nob Hill · rents +10% YoY, values -5.2%, supply capped | | 94102 | Tenderloin / Hayes Valley · HV rents $4,093 +9.8% YoY, Franklin St seam | | 94127 | West Portal · three-line Muni hub, 4BR homes $6,500-7,500 |
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Have a specific address in mind? We will underwrite it. |
The picks in this issue come out of a screen across every active listing in the metro. If the place you are actually looking at is not one of them, send us the address and we will run it through the same engine: the buy-and-house-hack path against never buying and investing the surplus, in all three scenarios. Look up an address |
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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 San Francisco deals? Forward this — they can pick their region at therenthacker.com. The Rent Hacker · SF Proper, CA · August 4, 2026 Manage regions · Unsubscribe |
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