Bilt Rewards first made waves a couple of years ago, primarily as a way to earn fee-free points when paying rent. Until recently, that was primarily limited to folks who had the Bilt Mastercard, as they can earn up to 100,000 Bilt points per year through paying rent as long as they make at least five monthly transactions on the card.
Bilt expanded that ability to earn rewards with rent last year when it added Alaska Airlines as a transfer partner. Now, folks can earn 3 Alaska miles per dollar when paying rent with their consumer Alaska credit card…with a 3% fee. This means that you can effectively buy Alaska miles for 1 cent each, which is worth it for some non-Bilt cardholders.
Now, the ability to earn Bilt points when using a credit card to pay rent through Bilt has been significantly expanded:
Rent payments made via a Visa®, Mastercard®, or Discover® credit card will earn 1 Point per $1 spent on rent paid through the Bilt App or website. Rent payments made via an American Express® credit card will earn 1 Point per $2 spent on rent paid through the Bilt App or website.
Effectively, almost anybody with a credit card can now earn 1 point/mile per dollar when paying rent via Bilt, in addition to credit card rewards, but with the same 3% fee that you pay when using the Alaska card.
Is that worth it?
The Deal
- Bilt Rewards has expanded the ability to earn Bilt points when paying rent through the Bilt app or website:
- Rent payments made via a Visa, Mastercard, or Discover credit card will earn 1 Point per $1 spent
- Rent payments made via an American Express® credit card will earn 1 Point per $2 spent.
- A 3% fee will apply when using a non-Bilt card to pay rent via Bilt.
- The same 100K yearly maximum earning limit will apply across all payment methods.
- The Alaska credit card continues to earn 3x Alaska miles per dollar, but DOES NOT earn additional Bilt points.
When is it worth it to use a credit card to pay rent with Bilt?
Previously, using a non-Bilt or non-Alaska credit card to pay rent through Bilt only got you a flat 250 points…hardly worth it given the 3% fee. Now, you can get 1x Bilt points on Visa, MC and Discover cards in addition to whatever rewards your credit card earns.
Essentially, you can look at it as through you’re buying points for 3 cent per dollar. In most normal cases, that won’t be worth it. However, there are several where it could be.
Meet minimum spend on a welcome offer for a 3% fee minus value of Bilt points
Let’s use the current Chase Sapphire Preferred 100K offer as an example. The required spend is $5,000. If you used rent payments for the entire $5K, you’d spend $150 in fees and end up with 105,000 Chase points and 5,000 Bilt points. We value Chase Ultimate Rewards at 1.5 cents each and Bilt points at 1.55 cents each, so you’d be earning ~$1,600 in points for $150 in fees…which is a marvelous deal.
Use a 2x everywhere card to earn a total of three points per dollar
Both the Citi Double Cash and the Capital One Venture cards earn 2 points per dollar everywhere. Using any of those means that you’re paying a penny each for 2 Citi ThankYou points or Capital One Miles and 1 Bilt point. Based on our Reasonable Redemption Values of ~1.5 cents per point for each of them, that could be worth it for some folks, although you’d need to be using the points to transfer to travel partners for high value awards. If you cash them out or use them for travel, you’ll just be breaking even.
Buy Bilt points for 0.38 cents each using the Bank of America Platinum Preferred Honors
Bank of America offers a bonus of up to 75% on credit card earnings for those with Bank of America “Preferred Honors.” If you have $100K in a mix of cash and investments with Bank of America, Merrill Edge, or Merrill Lynch and apply for Preferred Honors, you can earn 75% more credit card rewards on Bank of America-branded credit cards like the Bank of America Premium Rewards card or the Bank of America Unlimited Cash Rewards card. Both of those normally earn 1.5% cashback everywhere, but the 75% uplift turns them unto 2.625% everywhere cards…which comes close to paying for the entire 3% rent fee through Bilt.
Use Robinhood Gold for free Bilt Points
Online brokerage Robinhood has a waitlist for a credit card that offers a flat 3% back on most purchases (and 5% back on purchases made through the Robinhood travel portal). The card has been invitation-only for a year now and rollout has been uneven, to say the list. However, if you have it or get it, the cashback would completely pay for the 3% credit card fee and you’d essentially be getting Bilt points free by using it to pay rent.
Use the old version of the US Bank Smartly Visa for free Bilt Points and free money
Late last year, US Bank launched the Smartly credit card which earned 4% cashback everywhere if you had $100,000+ deposited in US Bank checking, savings or retirement accounts. That was quickly maximized by enterprising folks and, as a result, US Bank recently nerfed the card by capping the 4%, excluding categories and requiring that the $100K be in a checking account that earns no interest. However, people with the old version of the card could use it to pay rent and earn 1% AND 1 Bilt point per dollar spent.
Quick Thoughts
Although 3% seems like a substantial cost to pay rent with a credit card (and it is), Bilt allowing 1x earnings in addition to credit card rewards makes it much more palatable. I don’t pay rent, but if I did, I’d now look at it as potential spend toward new card welcome offers.
If my rent was $1,500/month, I’d be trying to get a new card every 2-3 months and use it to pay rent. There are numerous cards out there that earn 10-12x on the welcome offer spend, so 3% quickly becomes quite reasonable if it allowed me to increase the number of new cards I could acquire each year.
Outside of that, I’d probably still be more tempted by signing up for the Bilt Mastercard and earning points without paying the fee (unless I had the original version of the US Bank Smartly card or the Robinhood card).
If you rent, it’s certainly worth taking some time to look at your options through Bilt and see if there might be untapped potential for you to get some additional points and miles goodness.
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When paying with an Alaska credit card. Do you get 3x Alaska miles via credit card plus 1x Bilt points via Bilt app?
I also want this answered by more sites. Award wallet currently says that the Alaska card will NOT earn the additional Bilt point.
This article addresses this. Read above what Tim wrote…
NOTE: This is only available to those who pay rent via a landlord payment portal. This is not available to payment via check or via PayPal.
Will be very interested if Bilt expands this to mortgages when that capability rolls out. If you’ve considered using Plastiq to pay rent or mortgage before, this is essentially the same cost but with the added benefit of 1 Bilt point per dollar and no restriction to only Mastercards.
I’d argue it’s competitive with overpaying taxes as well. About 1.1% higher fee for 1X Bilt points extra, and you don’t have to front the money until next year’s tax filing. With the tax payment options starting to restrict use of Business cards this may also be a great option for those (unless it is restricted to personal cards?).
If your goal was spending on Hilton Surpass to achieve the 15k..would that be worth it?
Big spend bonuses and spending to loyalty seem like interesting avenues for this. Hilton FNCs are one good example, something like the Aadvantage Aviator Silver could be worth it as well. The 3% fee is close to a wash earning 1 Bilt + 3 Hilton points or 1 Bilt + 1 AA mile, then you get the big FNC or the 5K loyalty point bonus and double AA companion voucher for close to no net cost.
Do not forget that Amex only earns 0.5 Bilt point/$. So the Surpass is not quite a wash in value just for the points, but the value of the FNC is still worth considering this avenue if you do not have enough spend elsewhere.
Good point, forgot about the AMEX rate being less. Still probably worth it for how big the value is on that FNC but you lose a little on the Bilt side.
If I had to pay rent and pay taxes, I would save Amex for taxes since no difference in fees and use Visa/MC for rent with Bilt to get the better Bilt earning ratio.