Free edition The Rent Hacker SF South Bay, CA · July 31, 2026 1,084 listings scanned · 384 passed screen · 2 beat the S&P 500 We scan ~1000 listings weekly so you don’t have to. |
This week, our screen ran across 8 ZIPs in South Bay. The funnel: | Active listings, South Bay metro | 1,084 | | Passed market-research screen | 384 | | Cleared S&P 500 on paper | 2 | | This week's top 2 | 2 |
Assumptions: 3.5% down (FHA floor), 2-year owner-occupy, then full rental. 10-year hold vs S&P 500 total return. This week is a lesson in why we verify before we publish. Our screen flagged a Roosevelt Park "fourplex" as the best deal in the whole metro — the S&P would have needed 14.5% a year to keep up. Then the listing itself told a different story: it's one triplex of a two-parcel building, priced $250K above what the data feed showed. At the real number, it loses to the S&P. So it's not in this issue. I'd rather hand you two deals I can stand behind than four I can't. — Danny Brown, founder · danny@therenthacker.com |
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What changed this week Debuts 216 N 25th St debuts as the free unlock on a $50K cut (to $749K): an 1880 room-by-room single-family 0.06 miles from the under-construction 28th St/Little Portugal BART station. |
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★ Pick #2 · Unlocked for free readers 216 N 25th St Little Portugal / Five Wounds · 95116 $749,000 · 4 bd / 2 ba · 1,249 sqft · built 1880 |
Wealth advantage · 10 years +$945 vs S&P 500 · S&P would need 10.0%/yr for 10 years to match |
Strategy Rent out spare bedrooms while you live there | Financing Owner-occupied at 3.5% down | Live-in rent $2,625/mo | Full rental $3,900/mo | Renter pool Service, healthcare & trades workforce / SJSU students & Downtown commuters | Catalyst 28th St/Little Portugal BART Phase II station (0.06 mi) |
The case, and the catch At $749,000 after a $50K cut, this is the cheapest deal that cleared and the closest to the catalyst: 0.06 mi from the under-construction 28th St/Little Portugal BART station. Rent three rooms for $2,625/mo while you live in the fourth. Two honest caveats: it beats the S&P by just $945 over ten years in the cautious case, a rounding error rather than a windfall, and as an 1880 build one roof or foundation surprise erases that margin. It also just went pending, so read it as the template for a winning South Bay deal, not a listing you can still chase. Here is the concern to sit with on 216 before the address seduces you: the entire case is a room-by-room rent read on a 145-year-old single-family, and two things quietly compress the cushion. First, the current owner pays about $2,923 a year in property tax on a decades-old assessment; buy at $749K and the county resets you to roughly $12,300 a year. That reset is already baked into our number, which is exactly why the margin is a hair and not a pillow. Second, there is no unit-count upside to grow into: it is one house rented by the bedroom, so the model cannot lean on a future duplex conversion the way our multi-unit picks can. It cleared the S&P screen honestly. It just cleared it by inches, and an 1880 structure is one capital surprise from erasing the gap. The model's at therenthacker.com/methodology if you want to challenge any of the inputs. Sensitivity (rent assumptions) 5.5%/yr home appreciation modeled. Why pick #2 is the free unlock Pick #2 is the free unlock because it's the thinnest deal on the board, a razor-margin single-family anyone can pattern-match from the disclosed ZIP and price band. The paid issue carries the one deal with real cushion this week: a Roosevelt Park quadruplex whose in-place rents already clear the note, plus the deal we killed on verification and exactly why its math fell apart. |
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Deal #1 this week · paid only The one ranked deal is behind the paywall You unlocked #2 above. The one below clears a wider S&P delta than your free pick. Addresses and breakeven math locked. |
Both of this week's S&P-beating deals sit in 95116, within about 0.85 miles of the 28th St/Little Portugal BART Phase II corridor, the cheapest 2-to-4-unit land in Santa Clara County. |
Get this week's full report 2 deals cleared this week. Here's the shape of the pool you're getting: | | Median price | $1,172,000 | | Median S&P breakeven | 10.2% | | Median margin vs S&P | $16,132 | | By units | 1 × 1 unit (50%) · 1 × 4+ units (50%) |
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2 ranked deals: every correction we made, and every number we couldn't verify. Get the full report on all 2 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 both picks, 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 ZIP | 95116 | San Jose · 28th St BART Phase II walkshed, cheapest 2-4 unit stock in Santa Clara County |
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New: the South Bay house-hacking playbook |
We just published a standalone guide to house-hacking the South Bay: the BART Phase II corridor, which ZIPs actually pencil, and how we run the buy-vs-S&P math behind every pick in this issue. Read the South Bay guide |
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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 South Bay deals? Forward this — they can pick their region at therenthacker.com. The Rent Hacker · SF South Bay, CA · July 31, 2026 Manage regions · Unsubscribe |
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