The typical US renter needs $3,670 in cash just to sign. The median Hispanic renter household has $690 saved. Miami prices its front door in lump sums nobody quotes you in advance. Ours is the one number you see before you commit: Rent Protection starts at $399.
Because the price list reads your passport. One national co-signer service charges 70% to 90% of a month's rent to an applicant with US credit, and 98% to 110% to an applicant without a US file. That difference is a surcharge for having arrived recently.
Put it in Miami numbers. On the median Miami-Dade rent of $2,660, the gap between those two lines runs into hundreds of dollars, for the same lease, on the same unit, decided by which country holds your history. Nothing about the tenant changed between the two prices. Only the file did — and the file is the one thing nobody gave you time to build.
And it lands on people who are already short. The typical US renter needs $3,670 in cash just to sign, while the median renter household has $1,810 saved, and Hispanic renter households $690. A pricing rule that penalises a recent arrival is aimed, with some precision, at the thinnest wallet in the room.
By the rent, and only by the rent. Rent Protection starts at $399, a single payment that covers the entire lease — not monthly, not annual, nothing that comes back around mid-term. That entry price applies to rents up to $2,000 a month. Above that it varies with the rent, and you see your exact figure before anything is signed.
Who pays it is not fixed either. On some deals the renter covers it, on others the owner does, and it is settled like any other term, before the lease is drawn up. What never changes is how the number is reached: it is quoted on the apartment and the rent, never on where your credit history happens to live.
Transparent pricing is not a courtesy in this market. It is the difference between a decision you can make and a bill that arrives after you have already moved your life.
Sources: RentCafe (Miami rental competition and occupancy, 2025); U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2020-24 (Miami-Dade demographics and rents); CFPB (credit invisibility).
Your price should come from the apartment. Not from the country that holds your history.
Ask for the total. Add every line before you fall for a unit: fees per adult, the building's own review, move-in charges, parking. The number you must plan for is never the rent alone.
One payment, once. Rent Protection is paid a single time and stays with the lease from the first day to the last. No monthly line to carry, no renewal to budget for mid-term.
Get it in writing. Ask for the exact figure before you commit. Above $2,000 of rent the price varies, and a number you cannot see yet is one you cannot plan around.
Ask for it in writing, line by line, and count every adult on the lease. In a Miami condo the application alone runs $100 to $150 per adult, and the building can charge up to $150 more to review you.
An application fee buys you a review, not an apartment, which is why applying blind is the most expensive habit in this market. With 19 renters chasing every vacant unit, a rejected file is not only a no: it is the fee, the days and the apartment, all spent at once. Ask what standard is being applied before you pay to be measured against it.
How many adults will sign, and what does each one pay on their own? Does the building have a board of its own, with its own fee and its own weeks? What is due on signing day, and what is due before it? And which of those lines come back to you if the answer turns out to be no? Four questions, asked before any money moves.
Then set Rent Protection against that list: from $399, paid once, covering the whole lease, for rents up to $2,000 a month, with higher rents quoted on your actual file before anyone commits. It does not remove the rest of the market's costs and it never buys an approval. It answers the owner's question about the rent, and it is the one line you get to see in advance.
It starts at $399, and that price applies to rents up to $2,000 a month. Above that it varies with the rent, and you see your exact figure before you sign anything. What we will not do is price your passport, the way co-signer services that charge more for a missing US credit file do.
No. It is paid once and it covers the entire term of the lease, from the day you sign to the day it ends. Nothing is charged again while that lease runs and there is no renewal in the middle of it to plan for.
Then the price varies with the rent. $399 is the entry price and it covers rents up to $2,000 a month; higher rents are quoted on your actual file, and you get that figure before you commit to anything.
Not necessarily. It can sit on either side of the deal: some owners carry it because a covered lease is worth more to them than the price of it, and in other cases the applicant pays so the file stands out against eighteen others. Agree who carries it while you are still negotiating, not after.
Yes, because the price belongs to the lease and not to you: a new apartment is quoted on its own rent. The part you do not repeat is the work. You are paying for the new lease, not for being verified all over again from an empty folder.
No. It is priced on the lease and on the rent of that apartment, not per person. How the three of you split it is between you — and it is worth having that conversation at the same time as the one about application fees, which are charged per adult and really are paid one by one.
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.
Get approved →