Rent Protection starts at $399 — one payment, not a monthly line, covering the whole lease term. That is the number to compare against a $2,660 month that never lands and a $3,500 eviction behind it.
In this market it is normally priced as a share of one month's rent. The best-known benchmark, Insurent, publishes 70 to 90% of a month for an applicant with US credit and 98 to 110% for one without US history. Rent Protection starts at $399.
Put those percentages on a real unit. On the Miami-Dade median rent of $2,660, 70 to 90% of a month comes to roughly $1,860 to $2,390 — and that is the discounted tier, the one reserved for an applicant who already has a US credit file. Without US history the same tariff runs 98 to 110%, which is more than the month it is standing behind.
Read the two ranges side by side and you can see what is being priced. It is not the risk of the person: it is the absence of a US file. In a county where 54.5% of residents were born abroad, that surcharge falls hardest on the professionals who are most likely to pay the rent every month and least likely to have a score that says so.
A price expressed as a share of the rent is a price that grows with the unit: the same work, charged twice as much on a $4,000 apartment as on a $2,000 one. Rent Protection starts at $399 and is paid once, covering the entire lease term, never monthly. That entry price applies to rents up to $2,000 a month. Above that the price varies with the rent.
We do not publish a scale above that line, and the reason is worth saying plainly: it is quoted, not hidden. The exact figure for a specific unit is put in writing before anything is signed, so nobody discovers a number after committing to a tenant. Which side of the deal carries it is not fixed by us either — owner or applicant, it is agreed in the negotiation and written down with the rest of the terms.
Every other number on this page belongs to the market and moves without asking you. $399 is the one you can fix before the lease starts.
Sources: RentCafe (Miami rental competition and occupancy, 2025); U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2020-24 (Miami-Dade demographics and rents); CFPB (credit invisibility).
The market prices this against a month of rent. We price it once, and tell you first.
Compare like for like. The visible alternative is priced as a share of one month's rent. Put both numbers on the same Miami lease before deciding which one is expensive.
Settle who carries it. It can sit with either side of the deal. Agree that in the negotiation and put it in writing before the application goes in, not after.
Price the quiet risk. Doing nothing never appears on an invoice. It appears as one month that does not arrive, long after you stopped thinking about the decision.
Nothing at signing, which is exactly why it gets chosen. The cost arrives later: a second household you never screened, often in another state or another country, whose promise you now have to go and collect yourself.
A co-signer is a person, and people move, change jobs and stop answering the phone. You underwrote the tenant; you almost never underwrote the relative who signed behind them. The market knows how thin an ordinary signature is, which is why Insurent asks international students for a responsible party abroad with fifty times the monthly rent in income before it will accept one at all.
One costs nothing today and is discovered later, in the month you need it, at whatever it turns out to be worth. The other is a number you set at the start and never revisit. Owners are used to treating the first as free because it never shows up on a statement — but a cost you cannot see is still a cost, and this one is only ever measured after it has already been paid.
So the honest comparison is not $399 against zero. It is a fixed, single payment covering the entire lease against an open figure you will price in the worst possible month. That is the whole argument for putting it in the deal at the start, at the entry price for rents up to $2,000 a month, with the exact number for anything above that quoted in writing first — and with who pays agreed between the parties, not assigned by us.
$399 is the entry price and it applies to rents up to $2,000 a month. Above $2,000 the price varies with the unit, and you get the exact figure quoted in writing before you commit to anything.
Either one. Some owners cover it because a protected rent roll is worth more than $399 to them; in other deals the applicant pays it to make the file competitive against eighteen others. It is a single payment, and whoever pays is written into the agreement.
Then $399 bought you a lease you never had to worry about. That is what protection is for: the month that does not arrive. In Miami that month is far more likely than most owners assume, and far cheaper to cover in advance than to absorb afterwards.
A new term is a new agreement, so it is priced on the lease it covers. What you never do is pay anything while the current term is running: the payment is made once and stays with that lease from the first day to the last, whatever happens in between.
At the front, alongside the signing, once the figure for that rent is confirmed in writing. There is nothing to set up monthly afterwards, no date to remember later in the year and no second invoice halfway through the term. You handle it once, at the beginning, and then you go back to collecting rent.
No. The figure comes from the rent, not from the tenant's passport or the length of their US file. It is worth checking that elsewhere: the best-known service in this market publishes one price for applicants with US credit and a higher one for applicants without it, which is a price list that reads where somebody was born.
One conversation, no commitment and no paperwork. Tell us where your rental stands today and we will show you exactly what changes on your side of the table.
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