Originally Posted by
Majuki
Yes. Even if you don't pay rent or HOA dues, you can still earn 2x on the first of the month, and there are sometimes bonuses with certain merchants. Transfer partners are respectable.
The only potential downside is there is some talk of the Bilt model being unsustainable, so if they reduce the benefits significantly or shut down completely then perhaps it would have made sense to save the new account or hard credit pulls for a different card.
I'm curious why people on here would think they are not sustainable
? IMO they don't have a sustainability problem at all. Bilt only has a pseudo-sub, which only hardcore credit card enthusiasts will go out of their way to max out. The majority of users might put their daily spending on it for 5 days, or maybe plan ahead for a purchase or two. Overall Bilt still comes out way ahead compared to other comparable cards that have SUBs. If you benchmark it to no AF cards, those are usually out a $200 SUB out of the gate. If you benchmark it to mid-tier luxury cards, those are out $500/50k points from the start, minus a $90-100 AF which some cards even waive for the first year. For a cardholder living in an average US city, it will easily take 1-3 years of earning rent-based points just to breakeven with a card with SUB.
i also heard the argument that people will only make 4 de minimis transactions just to earn rent points. Honestly this is not terribly different from people earning a SUB with other cards then sock-drawering it. Min-maxers are going to min-max, whether it's Bilt or a different card. The unsustainable argument seems to assume Bilt's customer base consists of a lot more min-maxers than other cards, which i'm not sure is something that can be substantiated.