Leap: Features, Pricing and Integrations

Leap sells two things to rental operators: rent guaranty coverage, where Leap acts as the guarantor for renters who miss the standard income or credit criteria, and deposit replacement, where a renter pays a monthly fee instead of an upfront security deposit. A third product, the Guarantor Waiver Program, approves domestic and international students without a parental guarantor. Leap Insurance Agency arranges the coverage, and Leap says it is provided by an insurer currently rated A- (Excellent) by A.M. Best. The company claims 4.5 million homes protected across 48 or more states. In the security deposit alternatives guide Leap is one of the vendors that pair a deposit product with a guarantor product, and the facts panel below is rendered from our vendor database with a source and verification date on each entry.

Who it fits

The database tags single-family rental, institutional multifamily and student housing, from Leap’s own line that it serves “single-family owners to multifamily portfolios to student housing operators.” Student housing is where the evidence is thickest: Leap won the 2022 InterFace Student Housing innovator award, and both testimonials on its homepage come from student housing operators.

The fit is an operator who wants one vendor for applicants who fail screening and for applicants who pass but balk at the deposit. A student property that loses leases to missing guarantors and high move-in costs uses both halves. A conventional apartment community that only wants a deposit alternative can buy that alone.

It fits less well for an operator whose priority is managing the cash deposits it already holds, escrow, interest and refunds, which is a different product.

Pricing

Leap’s deposit replacement is resident-paid. The resident pays a non-refundable monthly fee along with rent instead of a lump-sum deposit, and Leap invoices the property each month for every active policy; unpaid premiums cancel coverage. The fee is set per property and is not published, and Leap’s guide warns that renewal prices can rise. Operators register at no cost.

Ask for the monthly fee at your typical deposit amount and how it varies by lease term. Ask what the property is paying if a resident falls behind on the fee but the policy is still active. Ask how the fee is disclosed in the addendum, since it is non-refundable and, unlike a deposit, never comes back to the resident, and Leap’s addendum has the resident acknowledge exactly that.

Integrations

The database records two PMS integrations: Entrata and Rent Manager. Leap also names Concurrent. It works through a charge code. The property adds Leap’s charge code to the resident’s recurring charges, and that code is how Leap pulls resident details from the PMS to write proof of coverage. Leap’s guide says not every PMS is optimized for the integrated charge code, mentions monthly reporting as the alternative route for resident details, and sends other properties to its partnerships team. Rent guaranty, by contrast, needs no PMS integration. If you run Yardi, RealPage or AppFolio, ask exactly how coverage is confirmed and who reports a move-out.

Limitations and questions to ask

Eligibility has a floor. Applicants must be 18 or older, pass the property’s background and rental-history screening, and hold a credit score of 620 or higher, so teams still run a traditional deposit track for everyone else. Coverage has conditions: no overlapping Leap policy from another property, no prior Leap claim payout, and no default in the first or second month of the lease. Policies do not renew automatically, so the renewal lease and charge code have to be set up again.

Ask what a claim covers, since the guide says delinquency and skips and “in some cases” damage. The guide also says the claim deductible is the premium still owed under the policy, taken out of the first claim payment. It also says a claim pays only after the property regains possession and must be filed within 120 days of the first default, or 60 days in New York. Ask for the coverage cap per lease and how long a claim takes to pay once filed. Ask how Leap collects from a resident after paying a claim. Ask your attorney whether the program fits your state’s deposit law.

Alternatives

The security deposit alternatives vendor list shows every vendor in the category with the same facts. Rhino is the resident-paid insurance policy most operators compare first, now sold as Greenlight Rent after its merger with Jetty. TheGuarantors sells Deposit Coverage, a surety bond, as an option on its lease guarantee, the closest match to Leap’s two-product shape. LeaseLock sells lease insurance to multifamily operators and says it does not pursue residents through subrogation. Options beyond Rhino lays out the rest of the field.

AI visibility

The current edition’s numbers sit in the Live from the Index section below, read from the run files each month; the prompts and sources behind them are on the row page it links.