Bilt Rewards program: Guide to earning points on rent, transfer bonuses, dining and more --[Reported by Umva mag]

You’ll earn 2,500 points each time you refer a friend to the Bilt Mastercard, on up to 50 total referrals. For every five referrals, you earn 10,000 bonus points. You can refer friends to the card through the website or app.

Earn Bilt points with Lyft

You can earn 2 Bilt points per dollar spent on Lyft rides when you link your accounts. When you pay for your ride with the Bilt Mastercard, you’ll also receive an additional 3 Bilt points per dollar spent. For most, Bilt Rewards is the best Lyft reward partner.

Earn Bilt points with SoulCycle

You can earn up to 10 points per dollar spent on SoulCycle classes booked through the Bilt app. See rewards and benefits.

Earn Bilt points by playing the Rent Free game

Bilt offers a game show-style opportunity for members to earn extra points on Bilt Rent Day (the first of the month): Rent Free.

Rent Free is set up like “Family Feud,” with a new creator or personality playing the game each month. As a Bilt member, you can earn points with Rent Free when you pick a top three answer, when you correctly rank that answer (double points) and when the celebrity guest picks the same answer as you (triple points).

On top of earning points, the 10 top-scoring players will win free rent for a month (up to $2,500); the next 600 top-scoring members will get Bilt points. If you tie, the tie will be broken based on who played the game first.

Elite status through Bilt Rewards

Bilt offers four status tiers. You can reach Bilt elite status in two ways: earning Bilt points and receiving fast-track status with spending on the Bilt Mastercard and within the Bilt ecosystem.

While you won’t earn fast-track status on rent spending, you can earn it through SoulCycle classes booked in the Bilt app, Bilt Dining restaurant purchases made with any card linked in your Bilt Wallet, Lyft rides when Bilt is set as your rewards partner and bookings made via Bilt’s travel portal.

Here’s a quick overview:

Your member status is based on the total points earned in a calendar year. You’ll receive the higher of the two statuses through qualifying points or via spending on the fast-track status path.

No matter when you earn status each calendar year, it’s good for the rest of the year and the following year.

Bilt Platinum members can apply for an Air France-KLM Flying Blue status match

Bilt Platinum members can receive 12 months of Flying Blue Gold status. To activate this status match, members must go to the Bilt app and select “Elite Status Match.” Then, members must transfer 10,000 Bilt points to Flying Blue to officially activate their Gold status. Luckily, the 10,000 points can be used toward a future Air France-KLM award flight.

After requesting status, it may take up to three business days for your Flying Blue Gold status to become officially active.

Flying Blue Gold status will give Bilt members additional airline perks and qualify them for SkyTeam Elite Plus.

Learn more about specific Flying Blue Gold status perks on Flying Blue’s tier benefits page and the added benefits of having SkyTeam Elite Plus status on SkyTeam’s FAQ.

Related: How to earn ‘interest’ on your points balance with Bilt Rewards

Redeeming Bilt Rewards points: Poor-value options

The Bilt Rewards loyalty program gives you many ways to use your points, though not all carry equal value.

If you want to extract the maximum value from your Bilt Rewards points, you’ll likely want to avoid some of these less valuable redemption options.

Use points for Amazon purchases

You can select your Bilt Mastercard on Amazon as a payment method and redeem your points to cover all or a portion of your purchase at checkout. However, Bilt points are worth 0.7 cents each when used this way. For example, you’ll need approximately 14,300 Bilt points to cover a $100 Amazon purchase. Compare that to TPG’s October 2024 potential estimated value of 2.05 cents per Bilt point, and it’s not necessarily the best deal.

Shop the Bilt Collection

The Bilt Collection is a curated list of items, including art, home decor and apparel. The value per point will vary, but since it rarely exceeds more than 1 cent per point, you should likely pass on this option.

Redeem your points for fitness classes

Fitness enthusiasts can redeem their Bilt points to attend name-brand classes like SoulCycle, Solidcore and Y7 Studio. The value will depend on the class you select but hovers around 1 cent per point.

Pay your rent with points

A potentially enticing option with your points is to save them to help cover your next rent payment. However, this is only available if you live in a Bilt Rewards Alliance property or opt for check payments. Even worse, the redemption value is just 0.55 cents per point.

Related: Ways college students can meet credit card minimum spending requirements

Redeeming your Bilt Rewards points: Medium-value options

The following redemption options will get you a decent value with a redemption rate of at least 1 cent per point.

Use your points to save up for a down payment on a home

Bilt offers the unique ability for users to save up their points toward a down payment on a home. If you opt for this route, your Bilt points are valued at 1.5 cents each toward a down payment.

Redeem for travel on the Bilt travel portal

You can use the Bilt travel portal to offset the cost of flights, stays, rental cars or activities — at a rate of 1.25 cents per point.

Transferring to airline and hotel partners: Best value

Nothing beats the outsize value of transferring your points to Bilt’s 18 airline and hotel partners.

In October, Bilt Rewards expanded its portfolio of transfer partners by adding global hotel giant Accor and TAP Air Portugal.

It’s worth noting that while Bilt Rewards was the only transferable points program to offer American Airlines AAdvantage as a transfer partner, this partnership officially ended June 24.

Still, the program has multiple valuable transfer partners to maximize your Bilt points.

It’s free to join these loyalty programs, even if you’ve never flown the airline or stayed with the hotel brand. Plus, Bilt gives cardholders 100 bonus points (up to a total of 500 points) for each loyalty program you link to your account.

You can easily get 2.05 cents per point in value — and perhaps much more — and score a lie-flat airplane seat or a luxurious hotel stay by transferring your Bilt points to the right programs.

**TPG has not yet tested transferring Bilt points to Accor Live Limitless, Alaska Airlines, Hilton Honors and TAP Miles&Go.

Bilt Rewards has historically offered some of the best transfer bonuses we’ve seen during Rent Day (the first of every month). This has included 150% transfer bonuses to some carriers, such as Emirates Skywards, as well as up to a 100% transfer bonus to Alaska Mileage Plan for July 2024 Rent Day.

Additionally, Bilt has also offered a 100% transfer bonus to Flying Blue.

Simply put, the options are endless. Because so many of Bilt’s transfer partners overlap with other transferable points programs, you can refer to our guides as inspiration to maximize programs like Air Canada Aeroplan, Flying Blue, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club and so many more.

Related: The best airline award chart sweet spots

Bottom line

Bilt Rewards presents an exceptional value proposition for both renters and nonrenters. Bilt has established partnerships with some of the more lucrative airline and hotel loyalty programs, enabling you to extract extraordinary value from your points. Your points transfer seamlessly at a straightforward 1:1 ratio (except when transferring to Accor), and most programs process the transfers instantly.

Even if you aren’t renting or don’t want to apply for the Bilt Mastercard, you can earn lots of points by linking your Lyft account, enrolling in Bilt Dining and booking travel through the Bilt portal.

See Bilt Mastercard rates and fees here.
See Bilt Mastercard rewards and benefits here.