Bilt Blue Card: Complex Housing Rewards, Modest Everyday Ones

The $0-annual-fee Bilt Blue Card is the most affordable sibling in the three-card Bilt family, but it shares the same headlining feature of all Bilt cards — the ability to earn rewards on rent and mortgage payments, up to 1.25x back.

Because housing payments are large, reliable, recurring transactions, the Bilt Blue Card could be a useful and cost-effective tool for those who want to earn a pile of valuable travel rewards on a monthly basis.

The problem, however, is that to maximize those rewards on housing payments, you'll need to put in a lot of work. You'll either have to commit to closely monitoring your non-housing spending, or you'll have to be OK navigating two different rewards currencies. We'll get into both options below.

Either way, it won't solve for perhaps the biggest drawback of the Bilt Blue Card, which is that its rewards on other (non-housing-related) expenses are underwhelming. You might be better off not worrying about rewards on your housing at all and instead opting for a much simpler rewards credit card that earns better rates on everyday spending, like dining, groceries or gas.

» MORE: NerdWallet's best credit cards for bills, utilities and recurring expenses

Bilt Blue Card: Basics

Card type: Rewards and travel.

Annual fee: $0.

Welcome bonus: $100 of Bilt Cash when you apply and get approved.

Rewards:

Option 1:

• Earn 1x Bilt Point on everyday (non-housing) purchases.

• Earn up to 1.25x Bilt Points on housing payments — but it depends on how much non-housing spending you put on the card:

So if, for instance, your rent is $2,000, you could earn up to 2,500 Bilt Points per month on that expense (1.25 x $2,000) — but that would require that you also put $2,000 or more in non-rent spending (dining, groceries, gas, etc.) on your card.

If you don't meet the minimum spending requirement at all, you'll earn just 250 Bilt Points per month on housing payments.

Option 2:

• Earn 1x Bilt Point + 4% back in Bilt Cash on everyday (non-housing) purchases.

• Earn 1x Bilt Point on housing payments — though to "unlock" these points, you'll need to have amassed Bilt Cash.

There are multiple ways to redeem Bilt Cash (see below). But to earn any rewards on housing under this option, you'll need to use your Bilt Cash to cover a 3% transaction fee on those housing payments. (For every $30 in Bilt Cash you spend for this purpose, you’ll earn 1,000 Bilt Points on your rent or mortgage payment.)

So in the example above, you could earn 2,000 Bilt Points per month on your $2,000 rent payment — but that would require that you also have $60 in Bilt Cash to "unlock" those 2,000 Bilt Points (3% of $2,000 is $60). You cannot pay this fee with actual cash.

Redemption options:

Bilt Points may be redeemed for a statement credit (at a value of 0.55 cent per point), a credit toward a home down payment (1.5 cents per point), booking travel in Bilt’s travel portal (1.5 cents per point), and more. Cardholders can also transfer their points to one of Bilt’s excellent travel partners for outsized value. When used this way, NerdWallet values Bilt Points at about 1.8 cents each.

Bilt Cash, on the other hand, is more limited in terms of redemption. $1 in Bilt Cash typically equals $1 you can use toward offsetting the 3% fee you'd otherwise incur to earn rewards on your housing payments (under Option 2 above). But you can also use Bilt Cash — again, typically on a dollar-for-dollar basis — toward things like hotel bookings, Lyft rides, fitness classes, GoPuff orders and access to partner transfer bonuses. Bilt Cash can be used to "buy" Bilt Points, but you can't directly transfer Bilt Cash to travel partners.

Only $100 of Bilt Cash rolls over from year to year. Any remaining amount expires after Dec. 31.

APR: The ongoing APR is 26.74%-34.74% Variable APR.

Foreign transaction fee: $0.

Benefits: Cell phone protection, purchase assurance and MasterRental coverage.

The three Bilt cards at a glance:

The $0-annual-fee Bilt Blue Card is the least expensive of the three Bilt credit cards, all of which are issued by Column N.A. Bank and serviced by Cardless. The other two options — the Bilt Obsidian Card and the Bilt Palladium Card — both charge annual fees. As you might expect, the higher the annual fee, the better the card's rewards and benefits: