Link: Apply for the no annual fee Bilt Mastercard®
The Bilt Mastercard® (review) is an amazing no annual fee card for those who rent, given that the card lets you earn credit card rewards for paying your rent with no fee, up to a limit of earning 100,000 points per year. Given that rent is the single biggest expense for many people, this is an amazing points earning opportunity.
However, those who own and pay an HOA might be able to earn points on the Bilt Mastercard for that spending as well, so in this post I wanted to go over that. I first wrote about how this is theoretically possible a couple of weeks ago, and now wanted to report back with my firsthand experience — it was a success!
In this post:
Why I picked up the Bilt Mastercard
I recently applied for the Bilt Mastercard, after hesitating for quite some time. There were two main reasons I held off on applying for the card for so long:
- The Bilt Mastercard doesn’t have an official sign-up bonus
- The Bilt Mastercard lets those who rent generate lots of points, but it’s less rewarding for those who own
However, in response to my hesitation, readers pointed out two things, which finally made me decide to apply.
First of all, while the card doesn’t have an official sign-up bonus, there does seem to be an unofficial sign-up bonus for many. Specifically, the day I received my card, I was offered 5x points on my spending for the first five days, up to 50,000 bonus points. That’s a pretty solid bonus, especially if you have a big payment to make by credit card during that period.
Second of all, several people reported not having any issues paying their HOA with Bilt in the same way that they’d pay their rent. I figured it was worth investigating that, which is another reason I picked up this card.
Can you pay your HOA with the Bilt Mastercard?
Several OMAAT readers have reported being able to pay their HOA fees via the Bilt Mastercard in order to earn points for free, in the same way they could use the card to pay rent. For those not familiar, HOA stands for “Homeowners Association,” which can be in a building or a community. HOAs typically have fees, which cover the common expenses.
Before I talk further about paying your HOA with the Bilt Mastercard, let me make a few things clear:
- In the terms & conditions, this isn’t listed as something you can use the Bilt Mastercard for while earning points as part of the rent offer, so I can’t guarantee that this will work for everyone, and we have no “right” to this
- At the same time, many (including me!) have had success with this
- Everyone has to use their best judgment, but this is something I feel comfortable with (which isn’t to say that you should feel the same way)
- The reason I feel comfortable doing this is because the people behind Bilt are very savvy and cut off all kinds of payment vendors, but it seems that this hasn’t applied to HOAs, and I imagine that’s not a coincidence; I’m confident that me writing about this isn’t going to lead to anything suddenly being shut down, as I wouldn’t be surprised if this is part of Bilt trying to grow market share
One other interesting thing is that up until recently, here’s what Bilt’s chat bot said when you asked if you could pay your HOA with the Bilt Mastercard:
Great question! Your Bilt Rent Account can be used for rent and rent-related charges. We have an internal team that validates these charges. Each rental statement can be a bit different, which is why our internal team reviews the payments.
Currently, you can use the Bilt Rent Account for the following transactions:
HOA Fees
Security Deposit
Electric Bill
Gas Bill
Water Bill
Condo Fees
College Living/University Housing (not paid as part of tuition)
Cable
Internet
Cell Phone Payment
Application Fee
In fairness, this has since been updated to the following:
Great question! You can only use our Pay Rent Online feature for rent and rent-related charges. These charges may include rent or additional charges from your landlord, like utilities or maintenance.
Our internal team validates these charges and ensures compliance with Bilt’s Terms & Conditions. Each rental statement can be a bit different, so our internal team reviews each payment.
I’ve now gone through the process of paying my HOA with the Bilt Mastercard, and it has worked exactly as expected. Let me share the process, which is exactly the same as the one I outlined for paying rent with the card.
When you log into the Bilt app and go to the “Pay Rent” section, you have the option of either paying online or paying by check.
My building lets me pay my HOA online, either by credit card or by e-check. I don’t want to pay directly by credit card, since that has a nearly 3% fee. So don’t just pop your Bilt Mastercard credit card number in there. Instead you’ll want to enter the routing number and account number provided by Bilt, so that you can pay without a fee.
My HOA was due on May 1, and I had set up paying via Bilt through autopay. Sure enough, the Bilt e-check details worked, and then my Bilt Mastercard account was charged for the full amount.
Then a few days later, the Bilt points posted to my account. While the points are backdated to May 2, they only posted to my account on May 5.
So yeah, this works exactly as I had hoped, which is awesome. This matches the experience that virtually every OMAAT reader has reported as well. I haven’t seen any data points saying that it didn’t work, though again, your mileage may vary (literally and figuratively, in this case).
What about paying your mortgage with the Bilt Mastercard?
While paying an HOA with the Bilt Mastercard seems to (unofficially) work, I’d note that you’ll almost certainly not have the same luck paying your mortgage with the card, and I wouldn’t even try, as that’s much more likely to trigger issues.
After all, you pay your mortgage directly to a bank, and that’s going to be blocked by Bilt. At that point you might as well put your customized Bilt account number and routing number into an email to a Nigerian prince who is offering you his fortune in exchange for a small upfront fee, as you have the same chances of that working out.
Bottom line
The no annual fee Bilt Mastercard is incredible for those who rent, given that you can pay your rent via credit card and still earn points at no fee. Based on my experience (and the experience of many others), it appears that you can also pay your HOA this way with Bilt.
Learning this was enough to get me to finally apply for the card, especially in conjunction with the card’s unofficial spending bonus upon receiving the card. Suffice it to say that I’m a happy camper so far with the Bilt Mastercard!
Hello,I am curious has anyone tried using the card for Commercial real estate payments?
I actually want to pay my HOA fees using BILT credit card (not ACH) directly because mine charges a very minimal one time fee for using credit card. If I do this on the 1st, will I get 2x points? Will Bilt consider this RENT? or is it only payments through the Rent Account is considered Rent?
Has anyone used this for a once off special assessment at a Condo? If its good for HOA, I have assumed you could just increase your monthly payment for an amortised assessment.
I tried to pay my HOA and I got the message: PAYMENT NOT ACCEPTED.
I'm wondering if I can attempt multiple hoa payments on my rental properties.
would maintenance fee for coops be the equivalence of an HOA for condos?
Based on Ben's experience I was interested in paying my HOA fees. I went to see what I would need to do to set it up and even paying by electronic check my payments would incur a $3.95 fee per transaction as by management company uses a third-pary - Zego, to process their payments. Unfortunately this takes too big a bite out of the potential "profit" by paying with the Bilt card.
@ DLPTATL -- Keep in mind Bilt can also send a physical check. I assume that wouldn't incur any fees?
That would most certainly work. Thanks Ben!
So far so good. I got my card in March and have payed my HOA fees for April and May with no problem.
This is the confirmation I was waiting for!
HOA fees on the card, baby!
Just a heads up: Bilt appears to have changed their chatbot response—I can’t get it to repeat the text reported above. It now says “These charges may include rent or additional charges from your landlord, like utilities or maintenance” and does not provide the itemized list. This seems more consistent with the T&Cs. Emailing support resulted in the same answer. Would be interested to hear if anyone has had luck with the ACH working for...
Just a heads up: Bilt appears to have changed their chatbot response—I can’t get it to repeat the text reported above. It now says “These charges may include rent or additional charges from your landlord, like utilities or maintenance” and does not provide the itemized list. This seems more consistent with the T&Cs. Emailing support resulted in the same answer. Would be interested to hear if anyone has had luck with the ACH working for rent AND a utility provider not billed through a landlord.
I just signed up and got the card. Used it for HOA, utility, and phone/internet without any issue.
Also, it appears these transactions count towards the 5 minimum. I only have two swiped card transactions on it so far but the points for all purchases have posted.
Thank you, Ben. This is helpful. I will now earn points on my monthly HOA payment.
You have the patience of Job to endure all these low comprehension readers.
Does the 5 transaction minimum to get rewards include rent/ACH payments or is it counting card swipes?
I signed up for it and have set it to pay my HOA, Gas, Electricty, Verizon home internet and cell service.
I think it's card swipes or transactions not including rent. I will say that you can do better for almost all the other items besides rent that you want to pay. PayPal bill pay is your friend
I tried setting up my Verizon bills with PayPal and it told me I couldn’t use a credit card for those, only debit. Is that common or an exception?
Not sure why that's the case, I just paid a Verizon FiOS bill with PayPal bill pay. You shouldn't set up anything from Verizon's side, it should be from Paypal which pushes the payment. I had linked my US Bank credit card for this payment.
Verizon Fios is not Verizon Wireless. As you can guess people are trying to pay Verizon Wireless bills with credit card on Verizon Wireless while maintaining the debit/ACH auto-pay discount. It sounds like Fios doesn't have a debit card/ACH auto-pay discount.
FiOS does have the same auto pay discount. I can't speak for the wireless side, but no reason to believe it won't work there either.
If you speak to a live person @ Bilt, they have specifically confirmed approved use for HOA fees, there is nothing nefarious in doing so!
5 (five) articles about this card in one week, surely thats a record? Are these sponsored, it seems like far more coverage than your usual new card applications?
@ John H -- They're not sponsored. Rather each was intended to address what I found to be an interesting aspect of the card. I get that it won't interest everyone, but I also know that there has been a lot of interest in this card...
@John H
They are called doing his job to please the SEO gods and their ads that your browser blocked.
Pick your poison, you want OMAAT to push 5 (five) articles about this card or 5 (five) articles about gossips and clickbaits.
If 5 (five) is too much, get more people to stop using ad blockers.
For you "Ski Trip In The French Alps" is 6 words.
For OMAAT, it expands to 15+ post with 1000 words each and a few thousand in revenue.
Almost every HOA lets you pay with a credit card and charges you a fee to do so. This card is nothing special.
You will still pay the fee.
Most likely not. You use the Bilt routing number + account assigned to you. It won't look like a credit card then
I am trying to pay my HOA through clickpay with the Bilt card, and no matter what I do, the clickpay portal blocks the payment method, saying the account numbers don’t match (I have confirmed they match umpteen times). Could this have to do with the values that need to be selected for account type (checking vs business checking) and account holder name? Does anyone have any tips for Clickpay?
@ Miami305 -- I think you're missing how Bilt works. The whole point is that you can make some payments without fees. You wouldn't pay your HOA directly using your Bilt Mastercard, but rather you'd take the Bilt routing number and account number from your Bilt account and then pay by e-check, which shouldn't have a fee. Then Bilt will charge your credit card for that purchase and award you points, without an additional fee.
HOAs typically charge convenience fees for credit and online payments that far outweigh the points benefits. Fee-free bank bill pay is the way to go, typically
I think the point is that your account will be assigned a routing number and account number so it looks like a checking payment to the receiver. Therefore bypassing the fee. When you enter the info to pay a bill or HOA fee, you use the routing # + account that has been assigned to the 'Bilt Rent account' when you set up the autopay or whatever.
Bilt provides a bank routing/account number to use so processes fee-free from the property end
Does Blit match or validate the primary property/rental address with any of the payments listed? It cannot simply be used for any utility, HOA, or cable bills I suppose.
Other cards (even the 2x ones) earn more on utility & cable than only 1x on Bilt, whether you used their bank account number or the card itself
Is Kerr taking bloggers back to the Caribbean? Way too much coverage for an average CC with no sub. Have to say doesn’t look good.
If you own multiple rental properties, can you use this to pay multiple HOA fees?
@ Justin -- Nope, you can pay for at most one property per month with no fee, unfortunately.
So, one could pay a quarter of the dues for property 1 on 01Jan, then property 2 on 01Feb, and so on. If you’ve got a lot of properties you could go so far as to pay a full year on prop 1, then a full year on prop 2, etc. That absolutely should work.
The point of greater interest to me is being able to pay utilities. If you have the money laying around,...
So, one could pay a quarter of the dues for property 1 on 01Jan, then property 2 on 01Feb, and so on. If you’ve got a lot of properties you could go so far as to pay a full year on prop 1, then a full year on prop 2, etc. That absolutely should work.
The point of greater interest to me is being able to pay utilities. If you have the money laying around, it seems you could prepay several months of gas, then power, etc. Looks like a great way to maximize the return on this and has given me renewed interest in the card. Thanks, Ben.
Not exactly true Ben. That is simply not how it works. The 'convenience fee' of 2% - 3% is added on the second you pay by cc. The cc company just sees the total bill.
It is paid thru a bank account number supplied by Bilt, no fee
Can the routing number method for non- rent related transactions trigger cash advance?
As I am planning to pay my property tax with this card, not sure if I can use the routing number method for that?
Also does applying for this card trigger a hard pull on your credit history?
Can't see how sending ACH or checks would trigger as cash advance?
From what I am reading around, they would just deny the payment (and maybe some return check fee).
@ nfd -- The payment would be denied, and that would violate the rules. If you want to make a property tax payment with the card then you'd just want to directly use the card and pay whatever the fee is so that you can earn points.
The way you have written this post makes it feel very much like a loophole, including saying it is unofficial. But then their chat bot specifically says that HOA fees are included. How unofficial is it when they are explicitly stating that HOA fees are included?
@ Grey -- Yeah, that's why this is kind of tricky. The chat bot confirms it and anecdotally it works, yet the terms & conditions don't support it. So that's why I feel comfortable using this, though can't guarantee it will work for everyone, or that it will work forever.
This sure is an extensive list of transactions is there a limit of one transaction per month fee, free or can you do different types as long as for the same property (utilities and hoa, for instance?)
If uncomfortable, email [email protected] and ask. Then screenshot the “yes” for future reference
What is a HOA?
@ Joan Sliel -- I updated the post to answer that question. Sorry for not clarifying. :-)
LOL, while I appreciate @Lucky to clarify what HOA stands for, but if you don't know what a HOA is then this card and the entire post is probably not for you.
What makes this feature of the Bilt card so useful, to me, is that almost 70% of the number of renters out there instead pay HOA. Both are underserved markets for paying fees while earning cc rewards. It will be a complete home run if Bilt figures out how to pay mortgages and long-term facility charges fee-free with their card (that would otherwise incur 2-3% fees).
You can confirm this by submitting a support ticket. they cover hoa fees and many more, including utility bills
Great question! You can use your Bilt Mastercard anywhere Mastercard is accepted, but the Bilt Rent Account (routing and account numbers) is just for rent and rent-related transactions like the ones listed below:
HOA Fees
Security Deposit
Electric Bill
Gas Bill
Water Bill
Condo Fees
College Living/University Housing (not paid...
You can confirm this by submitting a support ticket. they cover hoa fees and many more, including utility bills
Great question! You can use your Bilt Mastercard anywhere Mastercard is accepted, but the Bilt Rent Account (routing and account numbers) is just for rent and rent-related transactions like the ones listed below:
HOA Fees
Security Deposit
Electric Bill
Gas Bill
Water Bill
Condo Fees
College Living/University Housing (not paid as part of tuition)
Cable
Internet
Cell Phone Payment
Application Fee
Yes, you can also confirm this by asking the chat bot in the app. It spits out the same answer that mentions HOA
@ Anonymous -- Good point, thank you! I updated the post to reflect this as well.
This would be great for college housing.
Both of my son’s choices take credit cards but impose an annoying fee.