Link: Apply now 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 being right around the corner, we’ve just learned the details of the April 2025 Bilt Rent Day offer There’s going to be an airline transfer bonus… well, three transfer bonuses, actually, sort of.
In this post:
Details of the April 2025 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 at least 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 1,000 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 50-100% British Airways transfer bonus
Exclusively on April 1, 2025, Bilt is offering a 50-100% bonus if you transfer points to an Avios currency, including with British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus. The size of the bonus that you get depends on your Bilt elite status. Specifically:
- Bilt Blue members can receive a 50% bonus
- Bilt Silver members can receive a 60% bonus
- Bilt Gold members can receive a 75% bonus
- Bilt Platinum members can receive a 100% bonus
If you ask me, this has the potential to be a great deal. There are lots of great uses of Avios, and you can transfer rewards between all Avios currencies, opening up lots of great redemptions.
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 April 2025, there’s the opportunity to take advantage of a 50-100% transfer bonus to British Airways, Iberia, or Aer Lingus.
I appreciate Bilt’s transfer bonuses, and this is one that has the potential to be quite lucrative, given how much flexibility the Avios ecosystem provides.
Are you taking advantage of the Bilt Rent Day promotion for April 2025?
Question for Ben, should I do this speculatively as a Platinum with my 100k pts? I'm thinking yes, but I can be persuaded. I have tons of Chase points, so the BILT-Hyatt transfer is not needed. I can get AS miles via AMEX-Hawaiin, at least for now.
Thoughts?
@ Daniel Hebert -- That's a great question. My first instinct was "no," since we do often see 40% or so transfer bonuses from other programs to British Airways and other Avios currencies, which isn't 100%, but is still good. But the more I think about it, the more I think yes, maybe it is the best option? Since you don't need Bilt for Hyatt, it seems like a decent bet.
If you plan to...
@ Daniel Hebert -- That's a great question. My first instinct was "no," since we do often see 40% or so transfer bonuses from other programs to British Airways and other Avios currencies, which isn't 100%, but is still good. But the more I think about it, the more I think yes, maybe it is the best option? Since you don't need Bilt for Hyatt, it seems like a decent bet.
If you plan to maintain Platinum status, I suppose it could make sense to wait for another, even more lucrative transfer bonus in the future, but I'm not sure we'll necessarily see that. So I at least don't think it would be a bad move to make the transfer.
This is brilliant! Instead of spending on my Citi Double Cash or Capital One card to get 2x Avios with every purchase....let me spend on the Bilt card at 1x to transfer to Avios when they have a 100% tranfer bonus. Genius!!!
Or, hear me out, you could spend 3x on dining on your Bilt card and turn that into 6x Avios. Or maybe you just don't get using different cards for certain transactions based on the category multipliers because you're satisfied with 2x on ALL of your purchases, irrespective of the bonus categories. To each his own....
I get it. Only use i have for Bilt is dining and the transfer to Hyatt. But that is a very limited spend. Or you spend tens of thousands a month on dining? My point is Bilt and bloggers say "wow 100% bonus!" when people spend most at non bonus categories and they can get 2x the points without the need of a bonus using other cards.
"when people spend most at non bonus categories"
Well yeah, the whole point of the card is rent payments... which are non-bonused... but keep in mind that some people are spending 5-6k on rent so that adds up fast. Agreed that for MOST of us the difference between 30% and 40% on transfer bonuses is trivial, but if you're sitting with 100k of points that's another matter entirely. It guess it goes back to the...
"when people spend most at non bonus categories"
Well yeah, the whole point of the card is rent payments... which are non-bonused... but keep in mind that some people are spending 5-6k on rent so that adds up fast. Agreed that for MOST of us the difference between 30% and 40% on transfer bonuses is trivial, but if you're sitting with 100k of points that's another matter entirely. It guess it goes back to the whole question of who in their right mind uses this card for primary spend?
But in general, please do not compare a $0 AF card to a "pseudo $0" like Double Cash where you need a big brother card to take advantage of it. That's not a fair comparison at all.
Credit is due where credit is due. This BA transfer bonus is pretty good. Shame my points balance is so low, but I’ll bite.
Lucky, what is your overall Bilt strategy? Since they ended credit for tax payments and limited double points on the first to $1000 - I struggle to fit this card into my spend.
@ Jimmy’s Travel Report -- Honestly. I don't have much of a Bilt strategy nowadays. I have my Bilt Card connected to Miami's street parking system, so that helps me with five transactions per billing cycle, and then I earn points for the rent/HOA benefit. But that's it. I no longer have Platinum status with Bilt, because I can't justify putting a ton of spending on the card, given the other options.
Do you get 2x for street parking?
Too funny. That's my exact same strategy: Miami parking app for the 5+ transactions, nothing else
That said, curious if anyone else has had the same experience: a few months ago I only street parked 3 times (with no other transactions on the card) and I still got points for my rent payment. Don't know if it was just an error/dumb luck, or if they don't actually track the 5 transaction minimum
Hey Ben, I appreciate the transparency about your BILT strategy. It seems like we have very similar opinions about this card, so I was a bit surprised that you previously held Platinum status.
Street parking is clever. I've been doing $2 Dunkin' reloads (4 in a row) and timing it with my monthly Amex Gold $7 reload... which has been working fine so far.
@Mark, unless Ben is dropping *major change* on street parking, I highly doubt he cares whether it's bonused lol.
Sadly, the “one day only/ last minute notice” feature of BILT transfers means that you’re almost always going to be transferring speculatively.
*transfer bonuses
I typically transfer my Bilt points exclusively to Hyatt; however, as a Platinum member, I think a 100% bonus for Avios is very enticing. I've been burned in the past by speculative transfers, but the ability to freely transfer Avios between Qatar, BA and Finnar (all programs that I have gotten value from) seems to offer a greater deal of downside protection as opposed to transfers to just one airline program.
Post tittle had me believe it was up to a 100% transfer bonus to any Bilt airline partner.
@ Art_Czar -- Hah, my apologies. I couldn't fit British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus in there, without the title being longer than I aim for.