In the miles & points world, many of us are familiar with the Bilt Mastercard® (review), which is a valuable no annual fee card that 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 a long time, Bilt has been teasing that it will start offering points for mortgage payments. While there are still more questions than answers, we’re starting to get more details of what that will look like.
In this post:
Bilt partners with mortgage lender to offer points for mortgages
Bilt has announced a new partnership with United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM), the nation’s largest mortgage lender. With this, UWM will be the first mortgage platform where customers can earn rewards on their mortgage payments. UWM is investing $100 million in Bilt as part of this partnership.
Bilt claims that this is the final piece in its vision to transform the housing lifecycle — from the first apartment through home ownership — into a rewards opportunity.
This partnership circles around integrating rewards into the largest wholesale mortgage lender in the country, giving brokers a new way to differentiate and stay connected to clients long after closing. It’s also highlighted how this will empower mortgage brokers with next generation tools — every loan originated through UWM will include embedded Bilt benefits that reward clients monthly, including things like move-in gifts, milestone celebrations, and strategic refinance reminders, all tied back to the initial broker.
The partnership is expected to fully launch in early 2026, which is when details will be announced regarding the exact amount of points offered, and the rewards construct.
Here’s how Bilt CEO Ankur Jain describes this:
“We’ve built Bilt to transform every stage of the housing journey into an opportunity. Our members have been building credit and earning rewards as renters, saving those Bilt Points toward down payments, and using our platform to find and buy homes. With UWM, we’re completing the circle—they’ll continue earning rewards with every mortgage payment. This is the full lifecycle of housing, all on one platform.”
Here’s how UWM CEO Mat Ishbia describes this:
“This partnership with Bilt is a game-changer for our broker partners, consumers and the industry as a whole. By integrating Bilt into our servicing platform, we are reimagining how a borrower views and thinks about their mortgage payments, while also creating an unmatched lead generation tool and exceptional client engagement for brokers. This will redefine industry standards, putting relationship- building at the center of mortgage servicing and elevate the wholesale channel to a new level.”
This is a logical development… let’s see the details
When Bilt was promising it would start awarding points for mortgage payments, many of us wondered what the details would look like, and how the company would make the economics work. Bilt has certainly been able to show an incredible amount of growth (which is how the company now has a valuation of over $10 billion… ummm, wow), and I imagine this is part of that.
I figured Bilt wouldn’t just offer blanket points for all mortgage payments, as it does with rent payments. So it makes sense that what’s happening is that Bilt is partnering with a major lender, and will offer rewards for payments.
The concept of incentivizing going with a certain mortgage lender is nothing new, and we’ve seen loyalty programs previously offer points for that. The big question, of course, is just how lucrative this will be. Will homeowners be able to earn one point per dollar of mortgage payment? That seems like the best case scenario, but I wouldn’t assume that’s what will happen.
Presumably Bilt will be looking to partner with more companies on mortgage payments, so we’ll see how that plays out. For that matter, there’s obviously a cost to offering these perks, so will UWM be able to have competitive interest rates while offering these perks, or will this essentially be a situation where you have forgo a lower rate to earn rewards?
After all, especially for something like a mortgage, you want to be sure you’re getting the lowest rate possible, and rewards considerations should be secondary. So for now we’ll mark this as “developing,” but it’s nice to see that points for mortgage payments are on the horizon.
Bottom line
Bilt has announced that it will start awarding points for mortgage payments as of 2026, thanks to a partnership with UWM, the nation’s largest mortgage lender. The exact details remain to be seen, including just how many points members will be able to earn for mortgage payments, and how competitive rates will be.
It sounds like Bilt won’t be awarding points for all mortgage payments (like it does with rent), but instead, that this will be built up through partnerships.
What do you make of Bilt getting into the mortgage space?
It's interesting to see a mortgage lender trying to create a competitive advantage to secure more mortgages, presumably when, in reality it seems mortgages are bought and sold all the time with no input from the lendee. Would UWM be quicker to sell mortgages earning a ton of points if it's costing them? Or would this somehow make them more money, and therefore they'd be more likely to keep these mortgages because of their investment...
It's interesting to see a mortgage lender trying to create a competitive advantage to secure more mortgages, presumably when, in reality it seems mortgages are bought and sold all the time with no input from the lendee. Would UWM be quicker to sell mortgages earning a ton of points if it's costing them? Or would this somehow make them more money, and therefore they'd be more likely to keep these mortgages because of their investment in Bilt?
I've never chosen a lendor, personally, usually going through a mortgage broker to secure the best rates. If I happened to land on UWM (again, I had them once and they sold my mortgage in less than a year), I'd take advantage of this, I'm sure, but I don't get what behavior they're trying to drive.
I do not understand how this is going to work.
Heretofore, it was impossible to pay a debt with a debt. So how can Mastercard allow the processing of a mortgage debt with a credit card which is a loan instrument - basically a debt instrument.
I would have loved to put my mortgage payments on a credit card...
Interesting times.
Thats not correct. Credit card companies didn't care where you got the cash to pay off your bill. That's why there are balance transfers. You can also get personal loans to pay off your student loans.
Also, Mastercard doesn't process most of Bilt's rent payments (unless you are paying a fee). The free rent payments are processed by Bilt.
@Nate,
You are incorrect. And I am not going to argue the point as I have been working in the industry for quite a few years now.
> I would have loved to put my mortgage payments on a credit card...
Uhhh, https://www.plastiq.com/
William, you must know that Plastiq charges fees for using credit cards via their platform, too. The opportunity cost may be better or worse depending on the terms; we'll have to wait and see... the real benefit of BILT was that, at least for rent, using their Mastercard, or the Alaska card, you'd earn points with a credit card without any fees.
Obviously better than nothing, but earning, say, 1 million points over 20 years isn't exactly anything to get excited about, let alone choose a mortgage lender based on.
Yikes not looking good for Bilt here. Mesa’s current offering beats this by a mile
So we don't know exactly when this will happen, how it will affect interest rates, the manner this will be incorporated into loans, whether existing loans will qualify, how much the rewards will be, or how this will be implemented. I think we need to know more.
"The exact details remain to be seen..."
Ben said the same thing, just with far fewer words.
He also asked what we think.
What happens when your loan gets sold? In 2018-ish I refinanced with UWM and a year later they sold the loan. Left a bad taste in my mouth about UWM as the company they sold it to was horrible to deal with.
Mortgage servicer sales are a real frustration for customers who have mortgages, and your comment is spot on in terms of how most people feel when their servicer changes without any ability of the borrower to stay where they are. Couple that with the fact that the majority (almost all, really) of originators only plan on servicing a loan for a short, predetermined amount of time, and customer satisfaction almost always dips.
Hopefully this is just the start and not the direction it’ll go (only working with specific partners). As nice it’d be to earn points, I’m certainly not refinancing my COVID-era low-rate mortgage.
They don’t intend it to be the only company.
Of course, points will only be available if your mortgage is with a company they have a deal with.
@Never In Doubt, I meant I hope they don't go the route of only working with specific partners, and make it available for any mortgage. I'm pretty certain my mortgage company (Roundpoint) isn't big enough to be considered for a partnership. Hopefully I'm wrong. :)
Interesting. With Mesa announcing they are also getting into the rental space and expended transfer partners, this would be an interesting match up
You can already earn points on ANY mortgage ($1 point per dollar too) with the Mesa card, so this offering from Bilt seems pretty uncompetitive.
While earning points on mortgage payments would be welcome for many (except it seems it could be limited to just those that are UWM affiliated?), the bigger 'elephant in the room' on BILT is this 2.0 transition from Wells Fargo to Cardless, and whatever new 'premium' cards they may issue, if any. Those who have witness without-warning shutdowns of products by Cardless are concerned.
I suppose it's a good sign that UWM is investing $100...
While earning points on mortgage payments would be welcome for many (except it seems it could be limited to just those that are UWM affiliated?), the bigger 'elephant in the room' on BILT is this 2.0 transition from Wells Fargo to Cardless, and whatever new 'premium' cards they may issue, if any. Those who have witness without-warning shutdowns of products by Cardless are concerned.
I suppose it's a good sign that UWM is investing $100 million in BILT as part of this collaboration, but that doesn't feel like that much compared to the volume of processing that may occur with this new area of business. Will be interesting to see what the actual rewards structure will be. Like, is it gonna just be 1 point per dollar up to... 100,000 points per calendar year, like with rent?