Bilt Rent Day Promotion May 2024: Redeem Points For Rent

Link: Apply for the no annual fee Bilt Mastercard®

The Bilt Mastercard® (review) is a valuable no annual fee card that I applied for and hold onto. This allows you to pay your rent by credit card and earn rewards, even if your landlord doesn’t ordinarily allow no-fee credit card payments. For us homeowners, you can potentially even pay your HOA this way.

There are many innovative things about Bilt, including that there’s a Bilt Rent Day promotion on the first day of each month. With a new month right around the corner, the details of the May 2024 Bilt Rent Day promotion have just been announced.

While some members might find this to be valuable, unfortunately it doesn’t involve a travel transfer bonus (which are the Rent Day offers that those of us into miles & points get most excited about).

Details of the May Bilt Rent Day promotion

There are a couple of aspects to the Bilt Rent Day promotion, including the ability to earn bonus points (which is the same every month) plus one additional promotion.

Note that Bilt Rent Day promotions are generally valid from 12:00AM ET until 11:59PM PT, so technically you have around 27 hours to take advantage of them.

Earn 2-6x Bilt points on Rent Day purchases

Ordinarily the Bilt Mastercard earns 1-3x points per dollar spent, as you earn 3x points on dining, 2x points on travel, and 1x points on all other purchases. On the first day of each month, you earn double those rewards, meaning you earn 6x points on dining, 4x points on travel, and 2x points on all other purchases (except rent, where you earn 1x points).

With this offer, you can earn up to 10,000 bonus points each month. Keep in mind that you need to use your Bilt Mastercard five times each statement period in order to earn these points. It could be worth strategically making some purchases on the first day of each month to maximize this as much as possible.

Get a deal on Bilt Home Collection products

Unfortunately for May, Bilt isn’t offering a travel partner transfer bonus as its monthly Rent Day offer. Instead, if you redeem your Bilt points toward your rent payment, you’ll get 100% of those points back to be used toward the Bilt Home Collection. You can use this offer for a minimum of 1,000 points and a maximum of 50,000 points. To take advantage of this:

1. Head to the “Pay Rent” tab in the Bilt app between April 25 and May 1, 2024
2. Select “Pay with Points”
3. Add the amount of points you’d like to redeem toward rent 
4. Complete your rent redemption, and automatically receive the same amount of points back to be used on the Bilt Home Collection within six months

So, is this a good deal?

• If you redeem Bilt points toward rent, you get a $55 credit for every 10,000 points redeemed, meaning you’re getting just 0.55 cents of value per point
• The Bilt Home Collection lets you redeem points for all kinds of items for your house or for when you’re on the go, and the redemption values vary

To decide whether this offer makes sense, see if there’s anything in the Bilt Home Collection that you like. If there is, determine how much value you’d get per point, and then add 0.55 cents of value to that, accounting for the rebated rent.

Personally I’m finding most Bilt Home Collection items to get you significantly less than one cent of value per point. So even when you factor in the 100% rebate on rent, you’re still getting significantly under 1.5 cents of value per point on most redemptions. That’s not terrible, but also not great.

Just to give a couple of examples:

• I see Beats Studio Buds that retail for $149.99, and requires 20,000 Bilt points
• I see the Beast Mini Blender that retails for $99.99, and requires 20,000 Bilt points

It’s worth noting that it has now been several months since Bilt has offered a transfer bonus as part of the Rent Day offer. It’s totally fair that Bilt mixes things up, though I think for many of us collecting miles & points, the lack of transfer bonuses kind of changes the value proposition of spending on Bilt cards.

Bottom line

On the first day of each month, those with the Bilt Mastercard can take advantage of the monthly Rent Day promotion. In addition to earning up to double points for purchases, for May 2024, there’s the opportunity to use your points for rent, and then get 100% of those points back toward a Bilt Home Collection purchase.

While that sounds great, I wouldn’t get too excited about this. You only get 0.55 cents of value per point with Bilt toward rent, and then most Bilt Home Collection items get you significantly less than 1.0 cents of value per point, so in the end you’re getting a return of under 1.5 cents of value per point.

Do you plan on taking advantage of the Bilt Rent Day promotion for May?