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. That can be 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 February 2025 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, and what the vendors publish about pricing. It also covers which property management systems they connect to, and the companies in our database for the category.

Who buys a security deposit alternative?

There are two buyers with different problems.

The first is a multifamily operator with lease-up targets. The vendors’ own claims say who.

Greenlight Rent, Rhino’s new name, says 47 of the top 100 owners and operators use it. TheGuarantors says it works with all ten of the top U.S. operators and has more than 4 million units enrolled.

LeaseLock quotes Avenue 5, ResProp Management and Strata Equity Group, and cites $17 billion in leases.

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. LeaseLock’s own pitch, vendor-framed and to 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 nearly every vendor in the database tags institutional multifamily.

Single-family and small multifamily

The second is a single-family or small multifamily manager in a state or city where deposit rules are tightening. 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 that names AppFolio and Buildium. On Rent Manager it means Qira, Leap or Beagle.

Beagle sells its deposit alternative alongside renters insurance compliance for SFR and small multifamily. Qira holds the cash deposit in escrow as well as offering the alternative, and says it is built for multifamily and single-family operators.

The single-family rentals page covers managers of houses in detail, and deposit alternatives for small landlords covers owners of small buildings.

TheGuarantors also tags student housing, as does Leap, which sells its deposit replacement alongside rent guaranty coverage. Student housing is 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.

The managers who decide not to buy

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 do you evaluate a deposit alternative?

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.

Mechanism and claims

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; it files Jetty, TheGuarantors and SureDeposit here.

A non-pooled surety bond, where each policy stands alone; it files Rhino here, though Greenlight now describes Greenlight Deposit as insurance. 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 keeps a payment method on file that the manager can charge at move-out; that is Obligo.

The labels shift, so read the document the resident signs rather than the category name.

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.

The claims process

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 and what the coverage cap is per unit. Ask how long a payout takes, and what happens when the resident disputes the charge. Greenlight advertises a four-day claims process, Obligo pays by ACH with no claims step, and Leap pays only after you regain possession; ask every other vendor for its 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.

Moral hazard and solvency

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. SureDeposit’s surety is American Bankers Insurance Company of Florida, an Assurant company. TheGuarantors lists six carriers on its legal page, and Obligo names Wells Fargo letters of credit.

Greenlight, LeaseLock, Leap and Qira should get the same question, and the answer should be a named carrier or a named bank. Greenlight’s own disclosure says that outside 13 states its policy may come from an excess and surplus lines carrier.

The resident’s side and eligibility

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.

Deposits alone or in a bundle

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. Its point is fair: vendor sprawl across a deposit alternative, an insurance verification tool and a liability waiver leaves the gaps to you.

Greenlight (Rhino) sells renters insurance, Greenlight Guarantee and Greenlight Bridge job-loss cover alongside its deposit product, and Jetty sells Jetty Protect renters insurance.

TheGuarantors sells Deposit Coverage as an option on its lease guarantee, alongside renters insurance. The renters insurance programs guide covers the compliance side, and the glossary defines master policy, surety bond and the rest of the vocabulary.

How are deposit alternatives priced?

Only one vendor publishes a starting price. Jetty’s deposit page prices $1,000 of protection from $7 a month, set by the amount and the applicant’s credit score. The rest publish the shape.

TheGuarantors’ Deposit Coverage is a one-time fee that lasts the tenancy; it is usually resident-paid, and the landlord may pay it for the renter. Greenlight prices its premium per renter, monthly or once, and says the property pays nothing.

Obligo’s fee is a non-refundable percentage of the deposit, set by the renter’s profile and usually paid up front. SureDeposit takes one non-refundable payment for the residency.

Beagle prices its Renters Kit from $5 a month per tenant and lets the manager set the resident price; its deposit option carries a limit from $500 to $6,000. Leap describes a resident-paid, non-refundable monthly fee billed with rent, set per property and not published. It invoices the property monthly for active policies.

ePremium Insurance prices resident-paid policies by location and does not publish them.

LeaseLock, Qira, LeaseGuard and Deposit Choice publish nothing on price.

The shapes, and what to ask for

The shapes you will meet are resident-paid monthly, resident-paid one-time, and owner-paid on the resident’s behalf. The deposit management products add 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, and what the property pays per unit or per enrollment.

Then 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.

Which PMS platforms do deposit alternative vendors integrate with?

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 MRI, the widest set in the category and the only one that reaches AppFolio and Buildium. Its current partner page no longer lists Rent Manager. Qira lists Yardi, RealPage, Rent Manager and ResMan.

TheGuarantors names Yardi and Entrata. Beagle lists Yardi, Rent Manager and Rentvine, Leap lists Entrata and Rent Manager, and RealPage Insurance Solutions lists RealPage.

LeaseLock, Jetty and Greenlight (Rhino) each say they integrate with your PMS, and none names a system. A 2021 Rhino post named five, but no current page does. SureDeposit, Deposit Choice, LeaseGuard and ePremium Insurance 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 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. Run the demo against the accounting screen you already use.

Who are the deposit alternative vendors?

The table below comes from the vendor database, with a source and check date on every fact. Buyers replacing Rhino can start with the field set against Rhino.

Read the list as four groups. The insurance and surety group is Rhino, Jetty, LeaseLock, TheGuarantors, SureDeposit, Deposit Choice and LeaseGuard, sold to institutional multifamily first. Rhino and Jetty merged in February 2025, and Greenlight Rent’s About page calls them one company with one name.

Jetty still sells its own bond at jetty.com, so each keeps its own record here; the Jetty and Rhino comparison sets the two side by side.

The deposit management group is Qira and Obligo, which hold or administer the cash deposit and offer the alternative next to it.

The wider-program group starts with Beagle, a deposit alternative inside a compliance bundle, and ePremium Insurance, a renters insurance program that also sells the eDeposit alternative. RealPage Insurance Solutions’ record describes resident insurance programs; RealPage also sells a DepositIQ surety bond and resells Obligo. Leap stands apart, replacing the deposit with a monthly fee sold alongside its rent guaranty coverage.

Each vendor has its own page:

• LeaseLock’s lease insurance
• 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
• Beagle’s compliance bundle
• Leap’s monthly-fee program
• ePremium’s insurance program
• RealPage Insurance Solutions
• Deposit Choice’s Index row
• LeaseGuard’s Index row

The full vendor table for the category puts every vendor side by side.

Which vendors does this page include?

The criteria block below states which vendors qualify for the category and why. A vendor is listed if it sells property managers and owners a surety bond, an insurance policy, a fee-based plan or a payment-on-file arrangement in place of the cash deposit. It also needs a verifiable source for its description and integrations.

If you sell into this category and want to know what the Index records for your company, AI visibility for proptech companies explains what we measure each month. It also covers why the source map matters more than the inline citations, and what the fix costs.

Where to go next

Six head-to-head pages cover the pairs buyers compare most:

• Jetty and Rhino, the merged company’s two products
• Obligo against Rhino for a 300-door AppFolio manager
• Rhino and LeaseLock, two insurance products
• Jetty against Obligo, a bond or a payment method on file
• two surety bonds, Jetty and TheGuarantors
• Rhino and TheGuarantors for guarantor buyers

Buyers replacing a current vendor can start from Obligo’s alternatives or the field beside TheGuarantors.

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 or Buildium, start with Obligo, which names both. On Rent Manager, start with Qira, Beagle and Leap.

Then 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.