Bilt Rewards Rent Payment & Credit Card Review, Earn Points On Rent Payments With No Fees

See full updated review in this post.

Overview

Bilt Rewards website | Bilt Credit Card

Bilt is a platform for rent payments. They have specific landlord partnerships in their system (2,000,000+ rentals):

• The Blackstone Group, The Related Companies, Equity Residential, AvalonBay Communities, Inc., Camden Property Trust, Cushman & Wakefield, Trammell Crow Residential, Highmark Residential, AMLI Residential, Morgan Properties, SL Green Realty Corp., Starwood Capital Group, LivCor, GID, The Moinian Group, Veritas Investments, and Artemis Real Estate Partners.

They can also send a check out to any other landlord who is not in their system.

Bilt is launching a credit card which can earn rewards when paying rent. There is no cost to the renter or landlord. Aside from earning rewards with the Bilt credit card, it can also help someone build a credit history based on their rent payments.

Rewards

Credit Cardholders

Card is currently in invite-only mode. Card earns the following reward earnings:

• Up to 2x points per dollar on rent, max 4,000 points per month
• 1x points per dollar on all other purchases

Depending on how much you spend on the card, you can earn up to 2x points per dollar on your monthly rent payment, up to 4,000 points total:

• No extra points on rent payments if you spend less than $250 per calendar month.
• Earn .5x on rent payments (blue status): Spend $250 in other purchases per calendar month and earn 1 point per $2 on the following rent payment.
• Earn 1x on rent payments (silver status): Spend $1,000 in other purchases per calendar month and earn 1 point per $1 on the following rent payment.
• Earn 1.5x on rent payments (gold status): Spend $2,000 in other purchases per calendar month and earn 1.5 points per $1 on the following rent payment.
• Earn 2x on rent payments (platinum status): Spend $3,500 in other purchases per calendar month and earn 2 points per $1 on the following rent payment.

Non-Cardholders

You can also earn 250 rewards points per month even without having the Bilt credit card by paying your rent through the Bilt app. This is only if your landlord is part of the Bilt Rewards Alliance.

Redeeming Rewards

• Points are worth 1.5 cents each when applying them toward a down payment on a home.
• Points can be cashed out by applying them toward a future rent payment at a rate of 0.55¢

Points can also be transferred to travel partners at 1:1 ratio to the following travel partners:

• American Airlines AAdvantage
• World of Hyatt
• Air Canada Aeroplan
• Emirates Skywards
• Air France/KLM Flying Blue
• Turkish Miles & Smiles
• Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
• Hawaiian Miles
•  British Airways Executive Club
•  Iberia Plus and Aer Lingus AerClub coming in September

Signup Bonus

For a limited time, new Bilt cardholders can get the following bonus when signing up:

• Earn 3x per dollar on rent payments, up to 10,000 points (instead of the standard 2x, up to 4,000 points).
• Earn 2x per dollar on all other purchases during the first 30 days of card membership.

Card Details

• No annual fee
• Standard Mastercard World Elite benefits
• No fees to pay rent
• Card is metal
• Points never expire

Our Verdict

Chuck’s Verdict: The impressive travel partners Bilt has is pretty interesting for a startup, especially Hyatt and AA some will enjoy. Overall this card is probably a bit too complicated to be worthwhile for most people as you’d have to do some nice spend at 1x per dollar in order be eligible to earn points on your rent payments. You’d have to have all the chips falling exactly right for it be worthwhile. For example, someone with a $2,000 monthly rent payment can spend $3,500 on other purchases, and they’ll walk away with 7,500 transferable points which is more than 2x per dollar for the $3,500 spend.

Will’s Verdict: I asked Bilt what sort of guarantee they will be offering that rent arrives on time and they stated that they allow for three business days for the check to arrive but there is no guarantee in place. I think that’s going to cause some issues at the very least in the short term.  That’s not an issue for Bilt Rewards with the linked property managers I assume.

Note: If you’re wondering why the two different verdict’s it’s because we both wrote posts on this at the same time. Not something that will likely happen again!