The Offer
Chase is offering Sapphire, Sapphire Reserve, and Sapphire Preferred cardholders a special bonus offer:
- Close on a Chase mortgage and get 100,000 bonus Ultimate Rewards points on your Sapphire credit card
Reader D. shared with us an internal memo that’s going around Chase bankers regarding this promo which has some more detail:
The Fine Print
- Customers must have Sapphire, Sapphire Reserve or Sapphire Preferred credit card prior to 05/07/2017 to be eligible for this offer.
- This offer is only available for new, residential first mortgage purchase loans submitted directly to Chase.
- Applications must be submitted between 05/08/2017 and 08/06/2017.
- Chase mortgage loan must be funded and closed in order to be eligible to receive 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points.
- Upon the customer’s enrollment, Chase will review the account to ensure the eligibility criteria are met.
- This offer is not transferable, is limited to one per property at any given time, and may be discontinued at any time without notice.
- 100,000 Ultimate Rewards points will be posted to the Primary Cardholder’s account within 10 weeks after closing a purchase mortgage with Chase.
- Your participation in the program may result in the receipt of taxable income from Chase and we may be required to send to you, and file with the IRS, a Form 1099-MISC (miscellaneous income). You are responsible for any tax liability, including disclosure requirements, related to participating in the program. Please consult your tax advisor if you have any questions about your personal tax situation.
- The UR points will be standard UR points and can be transferred to partners or spent on travel (TPG).
- Offer is not valid for refinance. Offer is not valid for home equity loan.
- No minimum principal if required for this bonus offer.
- Sapphire card must be opened to get the points.
Stacking the Deal
Especially interesting is that Chase also has an offer to get $595 cash for closing on a mortgage (link), and the two offers stack as per the info in the memo above, and as was confirmed by Chase specifically with TPG.
Note, there are additional qualifications necessary to be eligible for the $595 bonus. You need a Chase checking account, and the mortgage payments need to be setup to be paid automatically from your Chase checking. There’s also a requirement to get paperless statements for the mortgage.
Incidentally, there’s currently a $300 Chase checking bonus (along with a $200 Savings bonus) currently available, so it’s not a bad time to open a Chase checking account.
Our Verdict
This offer obviously won’t work for most people since it’s only for those looking to close on a mortgage. Moreover, we don’t recommend necessary swaying your decision where to borrow based on an offer like this since the rates and fees of the mortgage are the most important thing to look at.
That said, Chase is the second-most popular mortgage lender in the USA after Wells, and it could be worth looking at their rates and fees to see if it makes sense. Depending how you value the UR points, there can be, perhaps, $2,500 in value between the two deals stacked together.
They seem to be targeted homeowners, but it should work for investment properties as well.
Hat tip to reader D. and TPG
Has anyone that closed on the their mortgage get their points yet? How long did it take? For me it has been 5 weeks so far (still no points). It looks like when they say 8-10 weeks, they mean it.
Is it possible to stop auto-deduct from checking, after getting the $595 and 100k UR? Otherwise, missing 3X TY with Plastiq would outweigh the value after a few months.
Hmm, I imagine once bonus posts you can stop that. Have to double check the terms.
Where is the $595 from?
https://www.doctorofcredit.com/chase-595-mortgage-bonus/
Ash: You think 3x TY is worth more than the plastiq fees? I don’t see where the value is.
I may actually be look for a mortgage for the first time later this year. What type of lender typically offers the best service/rate? Credit unions?
I wonder if the 1% cashback for mortgage payments from your checking account is still available and/or stackable with this. If they took that away then the 100,000 UR might not be worth it in the long term.
Link?
I don’t have a link. But it was an option when I got my mortgage with them about 1.5 years ago.
this just shows how aware chase is of our game. while some may find this deal to be useful since they are already looking at chase as a lender, i dont find it particularly great for this game.
At first I assumed their rates would just be crap in comparison but they are actually quite competitive. I only found 2 lenders with lower APR on bankrate and it isn’t by much.
3.774% APR
3.795% APR
3.875% APR <– current chase rate
Is bankrate a good place to find good mortgage rates? Or do they are they missing a lot of smaller banks, credit unions, etc that have lower rates?
What if you have both the Chase Sapphire Reserve and Chase Sapphire Preferred? Would you get the 100K points twice?
I assume that would not happen. If it would, it’d be a glitch so not something to ask about really.
How much will they value the benefit on the 1099?
I’m not convinced at all there’ll be a 1099. It’s standard fine print. Of course, it’s possible.
It’s also standard fine print for credit card referrals for Chase and I just happened to get one.
any DPs on manufactured mortgaging?
New acronym: MM in place of MS 😉
Lol has anyone tried to borrow and pay it off the next day with amount borrowed?
I’ve never done a mortgage myself, but I’m sure there are lots of fees along the way. It might be theoretically possible, but won’t be “free money”.
Probably not possible with Chase, but before starting the credit card churning hobby, I refinanced my home 9 times always to a lower rate while adjusting my payment amount in order to retain my original maturity date. The last 7 times I refinanced, there were no closing costs due to the lender credit being in excess of all fees. I earned just over $4,000 tax-free in the last year I did this (2013) with 3 refinances because those excess fees can be applied to the pre-paid interest at closing – effectively erasing your interest payment that month. I’m now at 2.625% for 15 years, so I will never be able to finance to a lower rate again. I became aware of credit card churning right after that.
Tom that’s awesome. It never occurred to me that you could legit churn mortgages like that. How much of a pain was it to constantly redo paperwork, escrow, etc.?
To Frito: The process was easier once I finally found lenders and title companies that used fillable PDFs and e-sign documents for everything. Before that, it was MUCH more painful than credit card apps. I forgot that I did my last refi after 2013 – my final one to that 2.625% rate in October of 2016. For that one, I did have to explain why I had about 12 credit cards opened in the prior 6 months. I just wrote “$0 balance and opened to earn new account bonus” for all of them. It worked. I even started another refi to 2.5% the same week that prior one closed. UW for it was approved, but then the bank pulled back and claimed .125% wasn’t a large enough reduction to “materially” benefit me. Since I had confirmed that fact BEFORE applying, it was a lie. The real reason for their withdrawal was due to the rates jumping up by about 1 full percentage point in late October / early November. They no longer wanted to loan me $400k for 2.5% over 15 years.
Well played. I’ll have to keep an eye out for this strategy. I like how they didn’t question you churning CCs for bonuses, notice how many refis you’d done, and process another. I wonder if the loan officers still work on comission like the housing bubble days.
I churn refi’s once per year and clear about 4k each time due to lender credit being much larger than closing costs. After closing i pay it down to 20k or so and then make monthly payments until it’s time to do again.
I’m trying to reply to Tom.
Tom, how did you learn about mortgage churning? I’ve credit card churned, but never heard about it for mortgages! Just googled it, but wanted to see if you had any websites/books you liked. Thanks!
What is a lender “credit”? Is that the bonus that a lender gives you for refinancing with them?
You don’t have to do an appraisal each time? Can you clarify a little more how you do it? Thanks!
I’m wondering some similar things:
1. How long do you have to wait before you pay off the mortgage?
2. What’s the minimum amount you could finance and still qualify for the bonus?
I don’t think there is any minimum amount, though you should definitely wait until after the bonus posts.
We noted in the post that there is no minimum (based on TPG’s interview with Chase).
My coworker got a mortgage that the deal was the bank payed all closing costs. The next day he refinanced at another bank at much lower rate. That is much better deal than 100,000 points
Open Chase checking for $300, close on mortgage for $595+100k UR. Not bad at all…
Good point, I should add the $300 checking bonus to the post.