81 N 6th St

81 N 6th St is a 8-story apartment building in Downtown San Jose. Its floor plate has 98% of its area within daylight reach of a facade and scores 99 out of 100 on this screen’s measures, which is part of why it works as housing.

CA-18 · Screened 2026-10-04 · Already housing

No address point in San Jose’s records falls inside this footprint, so it is named by the closest one that no other screened building claims — usually a site entrance, but check the outline on the plan below before relying on the street number.

Where 81 N 6th St is

Its block in Downtown San Jose, drawn from San Jose's own building outlines and street centerlines.

Suitability score

0–29

30–49

50–69

70–100

Already housing
Not screened
81 N 6th St

81 N 6th St and the 1,000 ft of Downtown San Jose around it. The streets are drawn at the width of the right-of-way they run down, sidewalks included, and named, and every building on these blocks is drawn. What is left open and stippled is neither: a surface lot, a plaza or a vacant parcel. The screened buildings are colored by the ramp above, the same one the district map uses, carry their score, and each is a link to its own page. Each casts a shadow as long as its measured height lets it, so towers stand out from the low buildings around them; the unscreened buildings have no measured height and cast none. 81 N 6th St is outlined in its own score color at the outline it covers at ground level. Its windowless core is hatched. The inset places it among every building the screen covers.

Floor plan: 98% of each floor sits within daylight reach of a facade. The shading is daylight, darkest at the windows and gone 35 ft in. The hatched area is windowless core: 423 sq ft per floor that must be renovated but can never be rented as an apartment. The dimension marks the deepest interior point, 41 ft from the nearest window. A–A is where the section beside it is cut.

Section A–A: cut across the depth of the plate, through the middle of the core. Daylight reaches 35 ft in from every facade, fading as it goes, and the hatched stripe left between the lit edges is floor that gets converted and can never be rented: 423 sq ft on the floor the screen scores, and 2,962 sq ft over 7 residential floors. The shaded ground floor is converted like the rest and counted as no homes.

This is already an apartment building: San Jose's rental housing and condominium records list 120 apartments here. It is on the map because downtown zoning permits offices and homes alike, but this site does not count it as a conversion candidate.

Every floor carries 423 sq ft of windowless core — area that must be gutted, seismically braced and sprinklered but can never be rented as an apartment. Across 7 residential floors that is 2,962 sq ft of cost carrying no revenue.

Modeled conversion metrics for 81 N 6th St, 2026-10-04.

Suitability scoreStrong candidate	99 / 100
Storiesfrom 97 ft LiDAR height ÷ 12 ft floor-to-floor	8
Floor plateper floor, from the city footprint	21,672 sq ft
Daylight efficiencyshare within 35 ft of a facade	98%
Deepest interior pointviability threshold is 80 ft	41 ft
Windowless coreper floor — renovated but never rentable	423 sq ft
BuiltSan Jose does not publish a construction year with this data	—
ZoningDowntown San Jose	DC
Opportunity Zonecensus tract 06085501000, 2018 designation	Yes

The plan: window line, shape and floor rhythm

35 ft of exterior wall for each home the screen estimates — enough for two- and three-bedroom homes across the plan.

The typical floor has 794 ft of exterior wall, and across 7 residential floors the building carries 5,557 ft of it in total, divided among the 158 homes this screen estimates.

Its plate is elongated at 0.43: a slab or an L, which is why so much of the floor lies within reach of a window: the outline buys daylight that a square plan of the same area would not. How window line and plate shape are measured.

At the model’s 750 sq ft average, the plan works out at about 22.6 homes per floor, repeated on every residential floor, since this building's outline does not change as it rises.

Why 81 N 6th St scores 99 out of 100

Daylight efficiency 100, Interior depth 97, Scale 100, Finance 100 — each out of 100, then weighted.

Score components for 81 N 6th St. Points are the subscore times its weight.

Component	Subscore	Weight	Points
Daylight efficiency98% of the floor area within 35 ft of a facade, scored from 40% up to 90%	100	45%	45.0
Interior depthdeepest interior point 41 ft from a facade, scored from 80 ft down to 40 ft	97	25%	24.3
Scale158 estimated homes, scored from 0 up to 150	100	15%	15.0
Financecompleted value covers conversion cost with 25% to spare, which tops out the component	100	15%	15.0

Every component scores at or near full marks, so nothing in the geometry or the pro-forma is holding this one back — daylight efficiency carries the most weight of the four.

Other buildings screened near 81 N 6th St

The 4 closest the screen also covers, from 150 ft away. They are the colored outlines on the plan at the top of this page.

26 N 5th St
7 stories · 80% daylit · already an apartment building
about 150 ft away
225 E Santa Clara St
13 stories · 87% daylit · 257 estimated homes · scores 90/100 (Strong candidate)
about 180 ft away
181 E Santa Clara St
25 stories · 57% daylit · 819 estimated homes · scores 35/100 (Marginal)
about 470 ft away
50 N 4th St
7 stories · 56% daylit · 178 estimated homes · scores 35/100 (Marginal)
about 480 ft away

A screen, not a feasibility study, from outlines and heights rather than plans: the method and how to correct a figure. If you know this building’s interior, you know what this model cannot see.