Free edition The Rent Hacker SF South Bay, CA · August 14, 2026 2,113 active listings · 238 screened · 2 beat the S&P 500 We screened 238 of the region’s 2,113 active listings this week so you don’t have to. |
This week, our screen ran across 6 ZIPs in South Bay. The funnel: | Active listings, South Bay metro | 2,113 | | Screened (market research) | 238 | | 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. Two deals out of 238 is the shortest list we have published for the South Bay. A week where almost nothing clears still tells you something: Milpitas alone gave us 97 listings and not one of them beat the index at cautious rents. The hardest call I made was keeping the second pick after reading the seller's own description of it, which you will see quoted in the writeup. — Danny Brown, founder · danny@therenthacker.com |
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What changed this week Debuts 98 N 24th St is the week's only debut. Of the 55 new listings across the six ZIPs, it was the single one that beat the index, and it enters at #2 after two days on market. |
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★ Pick #2 · Unlocked for free readers 98 N 24th St Little Portugal / Five Wounds · 95116 $599,888 · 3 bd / 1 ba · 1,028 sqft · built 1915 · 2d on market |
Wealth advantage · 10 years +$54,135 vs S&P 500 · S&P would need 10.7%/yr for 10 years to match |
Strategy Rent out spare bedrooms while you live there, then rent the whole house after you move out | Financing Owner-occupied at 3.5% down | Live-in rent $1,800/mo | Full rental $3,400/mo | Renter pool Downtown service and healthcare workers / Regional Medical Center and Downtown San José staff | Catalyst Five Wounds Urban Village Plan (0.06 mi) |
The case, and the catch Under $600K in Santa Clara County, and 0.06 mi from the Five Wounds Urban Village Plan anchor, which is as close as any property in this ZIP gets to it. Renting the two spare bedrooms while you live in the third brings $1,800/mo at our cautious band, and the whole house runs $3,400/mo once you move out. One bathroom serving three bedrooms is the friction, and three people sharing it is the daily reality of the room-by-room lane here. The seller markets this to investors and contractors and calls it, in the listing's own words, "a true project property", so the sub-$600K price is buying you 1915 bones plus a renovation budget. At $54,135 this is the narrowest margin we will publish and a renovation bill would eat it, so get a contractor's number before you get excited. The detached garage is ADU potential only, subject to your own investigation, and we credit it with nothing. 98 N 24th St clears the index by $54,135, the narrowest margin we will publish, and you should treat that number as fragile. The seller markets it to investors and contractors as a project property, and it was built in 1915, so the sub-$600K price in Santa Clara County is buying bones and a renovation budget. Our cautious case already carries $15,000 a year of repairs, and the room-by-room lane assumes two bedrooms are rentable the day you close. If a contractor comes back with a number in the low five figures, or if one bedroom needs work before anyone can live in it, the margin is gone. Three people sharing one bathroom is the other thing to sit with before you decide this is for you. The model's at therenthacker.com/methodology if you want to challenge any of the inputs. Sensitivity (rent assumptions) 5.5%/yr home appreciation in the expected case; the cautious column uses a lower band. Why pick #2 is the free unlock You are reading this one in full because it is the week's thinnest case, and thin cases are the ones worth showing you in full. You can already guess the ZIP and the price band from what is above. What the paid issue carries this week is the four-unit building holding our top spot, and specifically the occupancy problem sitting underneath its headline rent, which changes what the first year of ownership looks like. |
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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 deals that beat the index this week sit in the same ZIP, within a mile of the same Five Wounds Urban Village anchor. Read that as concentration, not confirmation: buy both and you own one ZIP, one anchor and one appreciation thesis, and the rail behind it is not scheduled to carry passengers until 2035 at the earliest. |
Get this week's full report 2 deals made this week's board, out of 2 that beat the index on paper. Here's the shape of that pool: | | Median price | $1,043,944 | | Median S&P breakeven | 11.3% | | Median margin vs S&P | $102,780 | | By rentable units | 1 × 2 units (50%) · 1 × 4+ units (50%) | | 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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2 ranked deals, and the full screening record behind them. 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 every one of them, 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 6 ZIPs | 95116 | East San José · county's cheapest 2–4 unit stock, future Little Portugal BART | | 95122 | Little Saigon · walkable King & Story core, EBRC Story Rd LRT 2027–28 | | 95131 | River Oaks / Berryessa · high-income tech-worker SFH, BART-adjacent | | 95133 | Berryessa / McKee · S-tier, Berryessa BART premium west of McKee | | 95035 | Milpitas · Great Mall / Milpitas BART transit core | | 95111 | Edenvale / Seven Trees · industrial and Kaiser job shed, ADU/SB-9 lot headroom |
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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 · August 14, 2026 Manage regions · Unsubscribe |
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