Security Deposit Alternatives for Property Managers

A security deposit alternative replaces the cash deposit at move-in with something that costs the resident less up front: a surety bond, an insurance policy, a monthly fee, or a payment method kept on file. The owner keeps protection against damage and unpaid rent, the resident moves in with less cash, and the leasing office gets to advertise a lower move-in cost. Operators buy it for lease-up speed. A head of operations at Highmark Residential, quoted in the Rhino and Jetty merger announcement, called deposit alternatives central to leasing and key to keeping occupancy high. The property managers who write about the category are less sure. The two most useful sources in our research were written by managers rather than vendors, and both spend most of their words on what can go wrong. This guide covers who buys a deposit alternative, how to evaluate one, what the vendors publish about pricing, which property management systems they connect to, and the eight companies in our database for the category.

Who buys it

There are two buyers with different problems.

The first is a multifamily operator with lease-up targets. The customer lists say who. Greystar, Highmark, UDR and Morgan Properties are named as Rhino customers in the merger release. LeaseLock names Tricon, RLDC and Starlight. TheGuarantors says nine of the ten largest U.S. operators use it and that more than 4 million units are enrolled. The combined Rhino and Jetty company says it covers more than 6 million units and 47 of the NMHC top 100. At that scale the deposit alternative is a leasing tool. A community advertising a $0 deposit fills faster than one asking for a month’s rent up front, and LeaseLock’s own pitch, which is vendor-framed and should be read that way, is that 91 percent of residents prefer a $0 deposit community. The buyer is a regional or corporate operations lead running Yardi, RealPage or Entrata, and every vendor in the database tags institutional multifamily.

The second is a single-family or small multifamily manager in a state or city where deposit rules are tightening, and where the cash deposit’s escrow, interest and refund-check rules have become their own compliance job. This buyer runs AppFolio, Buildium or Rent Manager and meets the category inside the PMS marketplace. In our database that means Obligo, the only vendor with named integrations on all three, and Beagle, which sells its deposit alternative inside a renters insurance compliance bundle for SFR and small multifamily. Qira, which holds the cash deposit in escrow as well as offering the alternative, tags both segments and says it serves operators from hundreds of units to more than 5,000.

TheGuarantors also tags student housing, the one segment where a lease guarantee and a deposit replacement are usually bought together, because the applicant often has no income of their own.

A third group is deciding not to buy at all. Peter Lohmann, a property manager who writes about the business, says it is not clear to him that there is a problem with the classic security deposit. If your deposits are refunded on time, your disputes are rare and your lease-up is fine, the category is solving a problem you do not have. That is a legitimate outcome of the evaluation below.

How to evaluate it

One line from the research is worth keeping above every other. Beagle’s comparison page says the program documents matter more than the category name, and the two manager-written sources agree with it. Sort vendors by mechanism first, then read the documents.

Start with the mechanism, because it decides who holds the risk. The taxonomy managers use, from the Second Nature blog, has four buckets. A pooled surety bond, where the resident pays a non-refundable fee into a pool that pays claims; Jetty, TheGuarantors and SureDeposit sit here. A non-pooled surety bond, where each policy stands alone; that is Rhino. Lease insurance, an insurance policy that pays the owner’s loss; that is LeaseLock’s Zero Deposit. And bill authorization, where nothing is insured and the resident instead keeps a payment method on file that the manager can charge at move-out; that is Obligo. Qira offers a zero-deposit or installment plan alongside escrowed cash deposit management, and Beagle bundles a deposit alternative with insurance compliance. Ask which bucket a vendor is in before the demo, because the questions that follow change by bucket.

Then the claims process. The Second Nature blog’s point about collections changes the math. Under a cash deposit, the majority of damages due from a resident never get collected either, so what you are buying is the vendor’s claims desk. Ask how a claim is filed, what documentation is required, what the coverage cap is per unit, how long a payout takes, and what happens when the resident disputes the charge. Qira publishes an average payout of 2.4 days on its site; ask every other vendor for the same number. Ask who pursues the resident after the claim pays, and whether the resident is reported or sent to collections in the vendor’s name or yours.

Then moral hazard. Lohmann’s question is the one your owners will ask: with no cash at stake, what is the resident’s incentive to return the unit in good condition or pay the last month’s rent? Ask the vendor how it answers that, and ask for its claim frequency at communities like yours. The Second Nature blog warns that residents may not be held accountable the way you and your investor need. The honest version of the vendor’s answer is that accountability moved from the resident’s cash to the vendor’s claims desk, and you are deciding whether that desk is good enough.

Then solvency. Lohmann asks what happens if the provider goes belly-up in the middle of a lease, and his post describes evaporated claims funds leaving properties exposed to bad debt. Ask who underwrites the bond or policy, in which states the vendor is licensed, and what the owner’s position is if the vendor stops paying claims. Jetty’s site names State National and National Specialty as underwriters. LeaseLock holds a Texas insurance license. SureDeposit is owned by Assurant. Rhino, Obligo, Qira and TheGuarantors should get the same question, and the answer should be a named carrier or a named bank.

Then the resident’s side, because it comes back to you as a complaint or a lawsuit. The premium or bond fee is non-refundable and, as Lohmann notes, does not count toward any losses the resident later owes. A resident who pays a monthly premium for three years and then receives a damage claim has paid twice. Ask what the resident is told at signing, in what document, and whether the resident can choose the cash deposit instead. Obligo offers the resident four choices, including a full cash deposit that earns up to 2 percent interest; ask other vendors whether the cash option stays on the table. Ask which state deposit-law protections the resident gives up by choosing the alternative, because that is the compliance question the Second Nature blog says attorneys disagree about.

Then eligibility. Not every applicant qualifies, and the ones who do not must pay a traditional deposit, so the leasing team runs two tracks. Ask what share of your applicant pool qualifies, what the decline rule is, and how the fair housing review of that rule was done.

Then paperwork. The alternative adds another agreement at lease signing. Ask for the addendum, ask whether it lives in your PMS lease packet or the vendor’s portal, and ask who maintains it when a state changes its deposit statute.

Last, decide whether you want deposits solved on their own or deposits and renters insurance compliance solved together. Beagle’s comparison page frames the choice that way, and its point that vendor sprawl between a deposit alternative, an insurance verification tool and a liability waiver leaves the gaps to you is a fair one. Rhino and Jetty now sell renters insurance, guarantor coverage and loss-of-employment insurance alongside the deposit product. TheGuarantors sells a lease guarantee and Zero-Gap renters insurance with its deposit replacement. The renters insurance programs guide covers the compliance side, and the glossary defines master policy, surety bond and the rest of the vocabulary.

Pricing models

No vendor in this category publishes a rate card. A few publish the shape. TheGuarantors’ security deposit replacement is a resident-paid, non-refundable bond fee described as a fraction of a month’s rent, not available in every state, and the landlord may pay it on the renter’s behalf. Rhino’s record describes a resident-paid, low-cost policy in place of a cash deposit. Jetty’s site describes Jetty Deposit as a low monthly or one-time payment, though its deposit page returned an error when we fetched it, so the terms are unverified. Beagle describes a low monthly fee. LeaseLock, Obligo, Qira and SureDeposit publish nothing.

The shapes you will meet are resident-paid monthly, resident-paid one-time, owner-paid on the resident’s behalf, and, for the deposit management products, a platform fee that may be per unit or per transaction. Ask for four numbers in writing: what the resident pays per month or at signing, what the property pays per unit or per enrollment, the coverage cap per unit, and the contract term. Then compute the resident’s total cost over an average tenancy and set it beside the deposit you would have collected, because that is the comparison a resident’s attorney will make.

For Qira and Obligo, ask separately what the escrow and refund side costs. Both sell cash deposit administration as well as the alternative, and the fees may not be bundled.

Integrations

The property management system decides which vendors you will see, so here is what the database records.

Obligo lists Yardi, RealPage, Entrata, AppFolio, Buildium and Rent Manager, the widest set in the category and the only one that reaches the small-portfolio systems. Qira lists Yardi, RealPage, Rent Manager and ResMan, and its integrations page describes two-way sync with Yardi Voyager and native payments on Rent Manager. LeaseLock’s site claims full integration with all major PMS systems and names none. TheGuarantors advertises PMS integrations and names none. Rhino’s integrations could not be verified because its site blocked our fetches; ask it directly. SureDeposit, Jetty and Beagle carry no PMS integration in the database.

The Yardi, RealPage, AppFolio and Rent Manager integration pages list every category in the pillar that connects to each system, which helps when the deposit decision is one of several.

None of the ten property management systems in our database surfaced a built-in deposit alternative module in the research. What the PMS does have is the cash deposit ledger and its trust accounting. For a manager whose only problem is administering that ledger, Qira’s escrow product and Obligo’s electronic refunds compete with the PMS’s own trust accounting rather than with a bond or a policy, and the demo should be run against the accounting screen you already use.

The vendors

The table below is generated from the vendor database and shows each vendor’s description, pricing model where published, PMS integrations and segments, each with a source and last-verified date.

Read the eight as three groups. The insurance and surety group is Rhino, Jetty, LeaseLock, TheGuarantors and SureDeposit, sold to institutional multifamily first. Rhino and Jetty merged in February 2025 and describe the combined company as the largest security deposit insurance company in the market; they remain separate brands, and each keeps its own record and profile here. The deposit management group is Qira and Obligo, which hold or administer the cash deposit and offer the alternative next to it, and which are the two with integrations named on the small-portfolio systems. Beagle stands alone as a deposit alternative inside a compliance bundle. Each vendor has its own page: the LeaseLock lease insurance profile, Obligo’s payment-on-file model, TheGuarantors’ bond and guarantee bundle, Qira’s escrow-plus-alternative platform, Rhino’s deposit insurance, SureDeposit’s Assurant-backed bond, Jetty’s resident products and Beagle’s compliance bundle. The full vendor table for the category puts all eight side by side.

What the Index shows

The Index does not measure security deposit alternatives yet, so the snapshot above carries no ranking and this guide claims none; the category will be added when a prompt set is approved.

Inclusion criteria

The criteria block above states which vendors qualify for the category and why; a vendor that sells a surety bond, an insurance policy, a fee-based plan or a payment-on-file arrangement in place of the cash security deposit to property managers and owners, and has a verifiable source for its description and integrations, is listed, and nothing else is.

If you sell into this category and want to know what the Index will record when it starts measuring it, AI visibility for proptech companies explains what we measure each month, why the source map matters more than the inline citations, and what the fix costs.

Where to go next

If you run institutional multifamily on Yardi, RealPage or Entrata, read the Rhino, LeaseLock and TheGuarantors profiles first and bring the claims and solvency questions above to each demo. If you run single-family or small multifamily on AppFolio, Buildium or Rent Manager, start with Obligo and Qira, since they are the two that will post to your ledger without a manual step, and decide whether the escrow product alone solves the problem you have. If the deposit is a symptom and the renters insurance clause is the disease, the renters insurance programs guide linked above is the better next page. The rest of the stack a property management company buys is on the property management software hub, one category at a time.