Free edition The Rent Hacker SF Proper, CA · August 18, 2026 646 active listings · 400 screened · 34 beat the S&P 500 We screened 400 of the region’s 646 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 | 646 | | Screened (market research) | 400 | | Cleared S&P 500 on paper | 34 | | 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. Last week I told you I passed on a fourplex in the Inner Sunset because all four units were tenanted and I couldn’t confirm the owner could legally move into any of them. It came back this week at #4. So I tested it properly: strip out the owner-occupancy assumption, finance it the way an investor actually would, and it still beats the index. It also stops being a house-hack. At 20% down you need $273,700 in cash against the $250,000 this newsletter underwrites for, and you’re not living there. Winning under a different set of rules than the ones we publish under doesn’t count. I passed again, for the same reason. — Danny Brown, founder · danny@therenthacker.com |
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What changed this week Exits Our #4 from a week ago, 40-44 San Carlos St, went pending this week after six issues on our board. We flagged it at a $688,319 modeled margin on a $1,139,000 ask, and it sat 131 days before it moved. Debuts 108 new listings entered the feed across 19 ZIPs this week. One reaches the board: a Duplex in 24th St Mission BART corridor in Bernal Heights, a two-unit building whose lower flat is delivered vacant. |
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★ Pick #5 · Unlocked for free readers · Week 2 on the board 1383-1385 Florida St Northeast Mission / NEMIZ · 94110 $1,299,000 · 5 bd / 3 ba · 2,411 sqft · built 1959 · 13d on market |
Wealth advantage · 10 years +$248,084 vs S&P 500 · S&P would need 13.4%/yr for 10 years to match |
Strategy Live in one unit, rent the other | Financing Owner-occupied at 3.5% down | Live-in rent $4,361/mo | Full rental $8,361/mo | Renter pool Hospital staff and residents / Design and trades workforce | Catalyst Zuckerberg SF General Hospital (0.49 mi) | Crash floor 2.6%/yr | |
The case, and the catch A 1959 duplex on the market for the first time in over 65 years, 0.49 mi from Zuckerberg SF General and its roughly 600 beds. We published this building last week as a triplex. It has two legal flats, a 3-bed upper and a 2-bed lower, and the correction below carries the whole record. At the corrected unit count it still clears the index. Both flats are tenanted and the two sitting leases add to a verified $7,995 in monthly rent today, so we underwrite what those leases already pay and leave the Rent Ordinance where it sits. Taking the lower 2-bed means an owner move-in, which San Francisco permits once per building and bars against a tenant who is over 60, disabled, or has a child in school, so establish who lives there before you write an offer. The upper flat brings $4,361/mo while you live below, and the building runs $8,361/mo once you move out. 1383-1385 Florida St is the one we open up, and it is also the one we got wrong. We printed it last week as a triplex at an 18.7% breakeven. The building has two flats. We changed our method this week as well: where a unit is occupied, we underwrite the rent it actually collects. Both flats here carry sitting tenants, so the live-in figure is the $4,361 the upper lease pays today, not a turnover rent we would have to invent for it. Corrected for units and re-priced for tenancy, it prints 13.4% and holds the fifth slot on its own merits. The same method change cost this week’s strongest building five full points. We would rather print the smaller number. The model's at therenthacker.com/methodology if you want to challenge any of the inputs. Why pick #5 is the free unlock Pick #5 is the one we open up because the honest version of it is the whole argument. The paid issue carries the four that ranked above it, and the three we threw out this week with the numbers that killed them: a fourplex that only works once you stop calling it a house-hack, a duplex whose sitting tenant pays $905/mo against the $4,200 our model assumed, and a unit we couldn’t verify at all. |
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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. |
Every deal on this board is priced off something already standing or already under construction: a BART or Muni Metro portal, Zuckerberg SF General, the UCSF Parnassus campus, or the adopted Central SoMa upzoning. Nothing here depends on a project that has yet to break ground. |
Get this week's full report 5 deals made this week's board, out of 34 that beat the index on paper. Here's the shape of that pool: | | Median price | $999,999 | | Median S&P breakeven | 13.9% | | Median margin vs S&P | $262,821 | | By rentable units | 11 × 1 unit (32%) · 15 × 2 units (44%) · 3 × 3 units (9%) · 5 × 4+ units (15%) | | Counted by rentable units, not dwellings on the deed: a single-family house underwritten room-by-room counts as its rentable rooms. |
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5 ranked deals, and the full screening record behind them. Get the full report on all 5 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 3 ZIPs | 94110 | Mission / Bernal · 2 BART stations, ZSFG in-ZIP, rents +7% YoY | | 94103 | SoMa · Civic Center + Powell BART, Central SoMa upzone | | 94112 | Excelsior / Ingleside · Balboa Park BART, CCSF 19,267 students |
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1383-1385 Florida St. Last week we ran this as a triplex. It is a duplex. The upper flat is 3-bed/2-bath, the lower is 2-bed/1-bath. The price we published ($1,299,000) and the bedroom count were right; the unit count was not, because our model read a bathroom-count ceiling as a third unit. Corrected to two units it still beats the index, but by less: an S&P breakeven of 14.4% against the 18.7% we printed, and a modeled ten-year edge of $330,000 against $781,000. At the corrected math it sits below that week’s top-five cutoff, so it was ranked in when it should not have been. At the corrected math it sat below that week’s top-five cutoff, so it was ranked in when it should not have been. It is on this week’s board at the corrected unit count, re-underwritten once more under the rule we adopt below. Both flats carry sitting tenants, so we price the retained upper flat at the $4,361/mo it collects today out of a verified $7,995/mo building gross. That lands it at a 13.4% breakeven and a $248,084 modeled edge, which is what earns it the fifth slot this week rather than the third.
1608 Folsom St. On August 4 we noted this had cut $125,000 to $1,950,000. Re-run at the new ask, it no longer clears our bar. The building is fully occupied at rents held down by the Rent Ordinance, and the numbers only reach an index-beating return at rents a buyer cannot get to while those tenants stay. We have taken it off the board. |
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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 18, 2026 Manage regions · Unsubscribe |
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