Most companies in this category will not put a price on a page, and there is a reason for that: the price is usually a percentage of your rent. Ours is a number. Rent Protection starts at $399, it is paid once, and it stays with the lease from the first day to the last.
The price, before anything else
Rent Protection starts at $399. That is a one-time payment, not a monthly subscription and not an annual renewal, and it covers the entire term of the lease. You pay it once, at the beginning, and it stays in place until the lease ends. There is no second charge halfway through the year and no clock that resets.
The $399 entry price applies to rents of up to $2,000 a month. Above that, pricing varies with the unit and the profile, and we are not going to publish a scale we would have to qualify in three footnotes. You see your exact number before you sign anything, not after.
Who pays it is not fixed either. In some deals the renter pays, because the approval is what they are buying. In others the owner or the manager absorbs it, because a backed applicant fills the unit faster than an unbacked one. Both readings are correct, and the price is the same either way.
Why it is one payment and not a monthly one
A recurring charge that lands on the same date as the rent is, functionally, a second rent. It looks small in a brochure and it is not small in a household budget, especially here: the median Miami renter already spends 39.8% of their income on rent, and 63% of renters in this area are cost-burdened, the highest share in the state that leads the country. Adding a permanent line to that monthly page is not a neutral design choice. It is the difference between a cost you close and a cost you carry.
One payment also behaves better on the other side of the deal. Nothing to reconcile every month, no extra line sitting next to the rent on the ledger, no charge to chase in month seven when a tenant has forgotten what it was for. The backing is set up once, at the same moment as the lease, and then it simply holds for the term.
What the market charges for the same yes
A flat number only means something next to the alternative. The reference point in this industry is Insurent, which publishes its rates: it charges 70% to 90% of one month's rent to applicants with US credit, and 98% to 110% to applicants without a US credit history. Read that twice. The second bracket is higher than the first, and the only difference between the two people is where their financial life happened.
Put a real Miami number in that formula. The median Miami-Dade apartment rents for $2,660. At those published rates the same approval costs somewhere between $1,860 and $2,930, and the higher end of that range is reserved for the applicant who arrived here most recently. That is a tariff on a passport, written into a rate card.
A price expressed as a percentage of rent has another quiet effect: the more expensive the apartment you need, the more you pay for the right to be considered for it. A flat entry price does not behave that way. See what renters actually pay.
The other price: not getting the unit
Every comparison in this category is made against zero, as if not buying anything were free. In Miami it is not. Losing an apartment has its own invoice, and most of it is money you never see again:
- Nineteen applicants per vacant unit. Miami was the most competitive rental market in the country, and you are not being compared with a standard. You are being compared with eighteen other files, several of which are complete and backed.
- Application fees of $100 to $150 per adult. Non-refundable, per application, per person on the lease. Three attempts as a couple and you have spent more than the entry price of Rent Protection on nothing but the right to be reviewed.
- A Miami condo move-in that starts at $7,000 to $10,000. Around three months of rent plus building charges before your first night. Every week you spend re-searching is a week that budget sits frozen and unusable.
- And on the other side of the table, $92 a day. That is what a vacant day costs an owner in Miami, with an average turn of 33 days, roughly $3,050 per turnover. An approval that arrives sooner is worth real money to them too. See the owner's math.
What $399 does not promise
A price is only honest if it comes with its own limits, so here they are, plainly. The number buys backing for a lease. It does not buy an automatic approval on any unit you choose: the owner and, in a condo, the association still decide, and a board can still say no on its own terms. It does not cancel your obligations either. You owe the rent, in full, every month, exactly as you would without it.
And it is not a saving. Nobody finishes the year richer for having bought rent protection; what they finish the year with is an address. That trade is worth making when the filter, not your budget, is what stands between you and the apartment. It is not worth making when you already clear the income rule comfortably and a landlord was going to say yes anyway. Check that first in the approval calculator, and then decide.