I earned points paying my mortgage via Bilt — how to set up your account to do the same
Well, the day has come that I've officially earned points by paying my mortgage. And while the Bilt 2.0 rollout has absolutely had its twists and turns, I'm not going to lie, seeing Bilt Points post in my account was pretty dang exciting.
While Bilt 1.0 had millions of members paying rent and earning Bilt points, the Bilt 2.0 program marks the first time that homeowners can do the same.
Now that I've done it, here are things to know and the steps to take if you want to pay your mortgage via Bilt and earn points on that big monthly expense, too. Please note that this is based on my own experience and how it worked for me, but as this is a new setup, it would not be surprising to see some things evolve a bit over time.
Related: What you need to know to set your Bilt account up to pay rent
Get your Bilt account set up to earn points when paying your mortgage
Before we get into the actual steps for paying your mortgage via Bilt to earn Bilt Rewards points, you need to set up a few things.
First, if you want to earn Bilt points by paying your mortgage, you need to join the Bilt Rewards program and have one of the three Bilt 2.0 credit cards.
- Bilt Blue Card: Earn $100 in Bilt Cash when you apply and are approved (see rates and fees).
- Bilt Obsidian Card: Earn $200 in Bilt Cash when you apply and are approved (see rates and fees).
- Bilt Palladium Card: Earn 50,000 bonus points and Bilt Gold status (through the rest of the calendar year in which it was earned and the following calendar year) after spending $4,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening (see rates and fees).
The only way to earn Bilt points on your mortgage payment is to have a Bilt card. You will also need to link a bank account to your Bilt account in the "Wallet" section.
The mortgage payment will be processed as an automated clearing house transfer and will ultimately be debited from your bank account. Unlike in the Bilt 1.0 program, where rent could be charged to your Bilt credit card, it is now an ACH transfer that may show as pending on your Bilt card for a day or so, but will ultimately be pulled from your bank account.
How to pay your mortgage using Bilt
Once you have a Bilt credit card and a linked bank account, you pay your mortgage to earn points. You're going to have a few different options here, depending on whether your mortgage is available for some pretty automatic direct linking with Bilt or if you need to do it manually.
To start, go to the "Home" option in your Bilt account and select "Add a mortgage." You can also select "Pay a different bill" or "Looking to pay for a different home?" if you are setting up a second or new payment.
It is possible that Bilt will already have your mortgage and payment amount identified based on available credit report information. If that's the case, you can continue with that option to link your mortgage so you can make payments from Bilt to that mortgage.
If not, you will manually search for your mortgage or click on "Find a different loan" at the bottom of the screen and follow the steps to search for your issuer, account number and/or address.
Once you have linked the mortgage, you should be able to make a payment initiated on the Bilt side, if you wish, for any amount you input.
You can even do a smaller test amount if you want, in advance of your full month's mortgage coming due, which I'd personally recommend if you are feeling uneasy about the whole thing. For example, I have a $50 test payment shown below.
Here you can also be sure you have selected the points-earning option you want. With the Flexible Bilt Cash option (shown below), Bilt Cash is used at a rate of $30 per $1,000 of mortgage paid to earn 1 point per dollar. If you choose the tiered option, you don't earn Bilt Cash but can earn up to 1.25 points per dollar spent on rent or mortgage payments, depending on how much nonhousing spending you put on your card.
Related: Comparing the 2 ways to earn rewards with Bilt
You can change the setting by clicking the "Using $1.50 Bilt Cash" section in the example shown below and selecting the tiered earning structure. However, a change won't necessarily take effect until the next billing cycle.
There's also another way to earn points by paying your mortgage with Bilt. Instead of making the payment on the Bilt side, you can actually initiate it on your mortgage provider's side.
To go that route, from the same "Home" section in your Bilt account, you can select "View payment instructions" as highlighted below.
Once you have clicked there, you will see BillPay account information that includes a routing number and an account number.
Note that this is not your bank account information you entered when you linked your bank account for the ACH transfer. This is a Bilt-operated account, and these are the routing and account numbers you can enter on your mortgage service provider's site to make a payment, similarly to how you would with your own checking account.
Simply hit "Show" to display those numbers, and then you can go and paste them into your mortgage provider's website.
Once you've done that, you should be able to make payments through your mortgage servicer's website like normal — only instead of billing your bank account, it will go through Bilt's account before hitting yours. My test payment took about 24 hours to complete all the steps.
In my experience, you should be able to set this up through your mortgage provider, not only to make one-time payments, but also to set up autopayments.
I earned 3,000 points by paying my mortgage for the first time with Bilt
I followed the steps indicated above and paid my first mortgage payment by using the routing and account numbers provided by Bilt under the "View payment instructions" method on my mortgage servicer's website, and ... everything seems to have worked.
My mortgage was paid on the day I scheduled it on my lender's side, and after about one business day, the amount was deducted from the bank account that I had linked to Bilt. The 3,000 Bilt points I earned by using $90 in Bilt Cash to earn 1 point per dollar spent on the payment also posted to my Bilt account that same day.
Bottom line
Because things like your home and mortgage payments are obviously very important to get right, my personal recommendation is not to wait until right before your payment is due to get things set up if you want to pay your mortgage through Bilt to unlock points.
I know I will sleep better at night with this all good to go well in advance of my next month's payment being due. Even if you aren't able to send the full next month's payment in advance, it could make sense to at least do a small test payment to ensure everything is working as it should for your specific account.
As for me, I'm one successful mortgage payment in and 3,000 Bilt points richer in the process. With that success in the bank, I'm full steam ahead, at least for now, with earning Bilt Cash to unlock earning points on my mortgage payment via Bilt.