How To Earn Rewards On Housing Payments With Bilt Credit Cards

So tired of all the blogs writing daily about Bilt. I guess the commish must be pretty juicy.

Given your negative comments on seemingly every topic, it is curious why you are dedicated enough to this blog that you are a Diamond member.

The real question is if it is working. The usual corners of the internet seem to have growing pains stories right now.

@ Peter -- I can only share my experience, and at least in my case, the points did post correctly, which is why I'm providing an update on this.

@Jack
Why are you so negative about seemingly all my comments? Curious why you are so dedicated to read all my comments despite just being a guest. Creepy stalker vibes.

I had to manually re-select payment method before 'rent day'; otherwise, it worked.

Jack, please note that (Dr.) Mantis (Toboggan) is an American, who now lives overseas (somewhere in Asia), and yes, he constantly whines (on here and elsewhere, like VFTW), often blaming 'the left' for his woes.

The title of this article is highly misleading. You don't earn any rewards for housing payments. Housing payments only offer you one of ways to "cash out" those rewards you earned on non-housing related spend.

Totally fair and appreciated! Personally just waiting a month or two before considering paying a mortgage with them.

Yup. Tony gets it. BILT tries so hard with 2.0 to convince us there are 'no fees' on earning points on rent, etc. ...but there's a real cost, so, yeah, basically, FEES. Kind of like refusing to call a 'war' a war, when it's clearly a war. (No, no... 'special' military operation... a 'conflict'... right. Psh.)

There’s a way to get 4x in spending using a HELOC that you repay right away through Bilt (drawing 4x your spend from the Helic).. Could you outline that,

It's worth highlighting that you need to link your checking/payment account via Plaid (not manually entering routing/account #) for eligible housing payments to successfully process. Initially I had manually entered this information but my automated housing payment failed on the 1st of the month. Received a Bilt email asking me to use Plaid to reconnect my payment account before manually processing the housing payment.

In strictest theory, you are completely correct. You're not really earning points for housing so much as you are spending Bilt cash to earn points which happens to correspond with your mortgage.

But since Bilt Cash is a spoiling asset (all but $100 expires at the end of the year) I am happy to get 2100 points for $64 in Bilt cash. I've also redeemed $10 a month at walgreens, $50 for a hotel, and $200 for 5000 extra points on spending. All value I wouldn't get otherwise

I must be misunderstanding this. It can't possibly be that I can spend $5k on stuff (that I get to keep) and that also makes my $6500 mortgage payment free.

(Spend $5k = (100/4 *50) = 200 Bilt Cash = (200/3 * 100) = 6,666.66 Bilt points = $6,666.66 toward housing)

What am I misunderstanding / where have I gone wrong? This would mean $5k of free stuff plus a nearly 25% mortgage discount.

Sorry, first parenthetical should be (100*.04*50) to yield the 200 Bilt Cash. But I must be off by at least 1-2 orders of magnitude somewhere.

Maybe I've now figured it out. Those 6,666.66 Bilt points cannot be converted to dollars you spend on your housing costs. You just need to have them in your account in order to earn another 6,666.66 Bilt points (or 6,500 in my case) once you make the payment; and those additional Bilt points can be traded for airline points or whatever (and must be used within a year). Now do I have it?

So, as I understand it, there is no way to set this up on autopay? You have to manually pay your mortgage every month to get points?

Yeesh, what's up with the photo for this post? We suggesting BILT is so bad it's like the US-Mexico border 'fence'? (Yeah, not too far off, I mean, like, BILT still says "Coming Soon" now for 6 months on the Bilt Cash Blacklane and Blade redemptions... B$ as in B.S. as in bulls...)

It's also an extra currency on top of the 2x everything card. It's just giving you a choice of ways to earn it. For many people with the card, you have more than enough Bilt cash to get the points without giving up any other uses of Bilt cash. Some people won't be satisfied until a card lets you buy everything for free.

Following your recommendation, I signed up for the Bilt Mastercard and have been using it almost exclusively for my spending. I also enrolled in Bilt's mortgage payment program, and it's been great for earning rewards.

At this point, I've accumulated over $2,800 in Bilt Cash. I'm trying to figure out the best way to use it before the end of the year. Would you redeem it toward travel, transfer it to airline or hotel partners, apply it toward a future down payment, or use it another way?

I'd love to hear what you think is the highest-value redemption strategy.

Oh man, got bad news for you; 2,800 BC is gonna be near impossible to use before expiration unless and until Ankur and team extend expiration or allow more than 5x Accelerators.

Still confused about BILT. I wanna like this card so much but this is the most complicated rewards system ever designed.

Can you setup auto-pay for mortgage payments?

If auto-pay is possible, how does the system know to apply BILT Cash?

Is the mortgage drafting out of my checking account at another institution?

Can you use a credit card to pay mortgage via BILT bill-pay?

Oof, bud, that's a lot of questions, which you could look up yourself. Anyway, the answers to your questions: Yes. Select "Flexible Bilt Cash," then it automatically applies the BC towards your payments to offset the fees. Yes. No.

Basically, you link your bank account to Bilt, and Bilt acts as the intermediary. You don't use your credit line to pay the mortgage, and you don't use another credit card to fund the payment—you essentially use your own cash, processed through Bilt, to trigger the rewards.

(Ankur, you're welcome.)

Given your negative comments on seemingly every topic, it is curious why you are dedicated enough to this blog that you are a Diamond member.

@ Peter -- I can only share my experience, and at least in my case, the points did post correctly, which is why I'm providing an update on this.

I had to manually re-select payment method before 'rent day'; otherwise, it worked.

Yup. Tony gets it. BILT tries so hard with 2.0 to convince us there are 'no fees' on earning points on rent, etc. ...but there's a real cost, so, yeah, basically, FEES. Kind of like refusing to call a 'war' a war, when it's clearly a war. (No, no... 'special' military operation... a 'conflict'... right. Psh.)

In strictest theory, you are completely correct. You're not really earning points for housing so much as you are spending Bilt cash to earn points which happens to correspond with your mortgage.

But since Bilt Cash is a spoiling asset (all but $100 expires at the end of the year) I am happy to get 2100 points for $64 in Bilt cash. I've also redeemed $10 a month at walgreens, $50 for a hotel, and $200 for 5000 extra points on spending. All value I wouldn't get otherwise

Sorry, first parenthetical should be (100*.04*50) to yield the 200 Bilt Cash. But I must be off by at least 1-2 orders of magnitude somewhere.

Maybe I've now figured it out. Those 6,666.66 Bilt points cannot be converted to dollars you spend on your housing costs. You just need to have them in your account in order to earn another 6,666.66 Bilt points (or 6,500 in my case) once you make the payment; and those additional Bilt points can be traded for airline points or whatever (and must be used within a year). Now do I have it?

Oh man, got bad news for you; 2,800 BC is gonna be near impossible to use before expiration unless and until Ankur and team extend expiration or allow more than 5x Accelerators.

Oof, bud, that's a lot of questions, which you could look up yourself. Anyway, the answers to your questions: Yes. Select "Flexible Bilt Cash," then it automatically applies the BC towards your payments to offset the fees. Yes. No.

Basically, you link your bank account to Bilt, and Bilt acts as the intermediary. You don't use your credit line to pay the mortgage, and you don't use another credit card to fund the payment—you essentially use your own cash, processed through Bilt, to trigger the rewards.

(Ankur, you're welcome.)