Free edition The Rent Hacker SF Proper, CA · August 25, 2026 878 active listings · 71 screened · 15 beat the S&P 500 We screened 71 of the region’s 878 active listings this week so you don’t have to. |
This week, our screen ran across 17 ZIPs in San Francisco. The funnel: | Active listings, San Francisco metro | 878 | | Screened (market research) | 71 | | Cleared S&P 500 on paper | 15 | | This week's top 5 | 5 |
We rejected 56 of the 71 screened. The kill list — what didn’t clear, and why — lives on this issue’s page. Assumptions: 3.5% down (FHA floor), 2-year owner-occupy, then full rental. 10-year hold vs S&P 500 total return. |
What changed this week Exits Last week's #5, the Florida St property, left the active feed. We're verifying its status and won't characterize the exit until we have a confirmed read. When we flagged it on August 18 it carried a $248,084 modeled margin at a $1,299,000 list. Price cuts Pick #1 cut $46,000, from $1,595,000 to $1,549,000, and moved from #2 to #1. Its cautious S&P hurdle now reads 22.4%, against the 17.8% we published on August 18. Debuts Pick #3 is the only one of this week's ten new listings to crack the board, six days after it listed. |
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★ #1 · Top deal · Back on the board — 4th appearance Inner Mission flats · 94110 $1,549,000 · 9 bd / 4 ba · 3,673 sqft · built 1900 · 64d on market Live in one unit, rent the other three |
Wealth advantage · 10 years · low case +$997,560 vs S&P 500 · S&P would need 20.3%/yr for 10 years to match · crash floor -4.4%/yr |
Four flats at $1,549,000, 0.19 mi from 24th St Mission BART. You live in one and the other three pay $9,378/mo at our cautious rents, roughly $112,500 a year against a $1.55M basis. The S&P would need 20.3% a year for a decade to keep up, and the seller has already cut $46,000 off the ask. This week's #1 does not rest on an estimate. Three of its four flats are occupied, and the cautious $9,378/mo is the SF Rent Board's measured in-place median for a 2-bedroom in 94110: $3,126 across 723 registered tenancies. The fourth flat is listed vacant, so you move in without displacing anyone. The catch rides along with it. A 1900 building puts those three tenancies under rent control, so you inherit the rents rather than reset them, and the annual allowable increase is your ceiling. Even on those inherited rents the S&P 500 needs 20.3% a year for a decade to keep pace, and prices would have to fall 4.4% before this one flips. The model's at therenthacker.com/methodology if you want to challenge any of the inputs. |
#2 · Week 3 on the board Ingleside / Balboa Park catalyst zone · 94112 $1,199,900 · 8 bd / 7 ba · 2,200 sqft · built 1908 · 30d on market Live in one unit, rent the other two |
Wealth advantage · 10 years · low case +$778,429 vs S&P 500 · S&P would need 18.4%/yr for 10 years to match · crash floor -4.5%/yr |
Eight bedrooms and seven baths across three units at $1,199,900, with Balboa Park BART 0.44 mi away. Two rented units bring $5,252/mo while you live in the third; all three run $12,502/mo after you move out. Per-square-foot prices in this ZIP are printing 12-16% below last year, so the entry basis is negotiable, and the S&P still needs 18.4% a year to catch it. |
#3 Corona Heights / hillside interior · 94114 $1,595,000 · 3 bd / 3 ba · 2,240 sqft · built 1900 · 6d on market Live in one unit, rent the other two |
Wealth advantage · 10 years · low case +$660,403 vs S&P 500 · S&P would need 17.9%/yr for 10 years to match · crash floor -1.4%/yr |
Six days on market for a $1,595,000 triplex where one unit is delivered vacant and the two tenanted units already pay $10,577/mo between them. You move into the empty one and the existing leases start covering the note immediately. Castro Muni Metro sits 0.46 mi downhill, and this deal still wins unless SF home prices fall more than 1.4% a year for ten straight years. |
#4 Inner Sunset · 94122 $1,190,000 · 4 bd / 4 ba · 3,240 sqft · built 1914 · 29d on market Live in one unit, rent the other three |
Wealth advantage · 10 years · low case +$416,755 vs S&P 500 · S&P would need 14.6%/yr for 10 years to match · crash floor -0.7%/yr |
A four-unit Edwardian in the Inner Sunset at $1,190,000, which works out to under $300,000 a door in the ZIP with the best tenant credit in the city. The pool here is UCSF Parnassus residents and postdocs on one-to-three-year appointments, and three rented units pay $7,392/mo while you live in the fourth. The N-Judah is 0.41 mi away and the S&P needs 14.6% a year to beat this. |
#5 Hunters Point Hill / HPS Phase 1 · 94124 $1,188,000 · 9 bd / 3 ba · 3,500 sqft · built 1919 · 104d on market Live in one unit, rent the other two |
Wealth advantage · 10 years · low case +$317,562 vs S&P 500 · S&P would need 13.6%/yr for 10 years to match · crash floor 0.1%/yr |
Nine bedrooms across three units at $1,188,000, the cheapest per-bedroom entry on this board at about $132,000 a bed. Two rented units bring $3,992/mo while you live in the third, rising to $10,128/mo once you move out. It sits 0.32 mi from the Hunters Point Shipyard Phase 1 footprint, so budget real money for the environmental read: the shipyard is a federal cleanup site and nearby parcels carry liquefaction and flood exposure. Even carrying that, the deal holds as long as home values grow at all. |
None of these candidates sits more than nine-tenths of a mile from its nearest named catalyst, and every one is a 2-to-4-unit building an owner-occupant can finance. |
For paying members 5 deals made this week's board, out of 15 that beat the index on paper. Here's the shape of that pool: | | Median price | $1,495,000 | | Median S&P breakeven | 12.9% | | Median margin vs S&P | $237,757 | | By dwellings | 4 × 2 units (27%) · 6 × 3 units (40%) · 5 × 4+ units (33%) | | Counted by dwellings on the deed: a single-family house underwritten room-by-room is one dwelling, and its rooms are an income model, not extra units. |
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Every number in this issue, re-run at your numbers. Members set their rent, tax bracket, horizon, and down payment once. Every pick then renders its verdict at those numbers, a personal feed filters the whole screened pool to their ZIPs and budget, and an alert goes out when a new property clears the index at their numbers — not ours. Membership opens the full underwriting on all five picks: the three-scenario rent tables, the crash floor on each, and property pages where every number traces to its named source. This week that trace is unusually short. Every cautious rent in this issue is a measurement, either the city's rent registry or a rent roll captured off the listing itself, and the pages show you which one each pick stands on. See what membership includes → |
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This week's 7 ZIPs | 94103 | SoMa · Powell/Civic Center BART, Central SoMa 7,000-unit capacity | | 94110 | Mission / Bernal Heights · two BART stations, ZSFG in-ZIP, rents +7% YoY | | 94112 | Excelsior / Ingleside · Balboa Park BART, CCSF, per-sqft down 12-16% YoY | | 94114 | Castro / Noe Valley · four-line Muni rail confluence, CPMC Davies in-ZIP | | 94117 | Haight-Ashbury / NoPa · UCSF Parnassus $4.3B build, Divisadero upzone enacted | | 94122 | Inner / Outer Sunset · UCSF walk-shed, FZP 40-to-85 ft parcel-confirmed | | 94124 | Bayview / Hunters Point · $917K basis, T-Third rail, India Basin park 2028 |
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Every figure uses conservative rent estimates. Where we can see the rent a sitting tenant is actually paying, we use that rather than a market rate. 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 25, 2026 Manage regions · Unsubscribe |
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