Mission accomplished, I guess.

They don’t want your spend on rent day only.

Right, but their total non-rent charge volume (i.e., the volume on which they can collect interchange fees) will precipitously decline now by a meaningful amount - I'm guessing 20-50%.

I'm still not sure if they make or lose money on each charge though.

The doubled travel (4X) and dining (6X) charges on rent day were probably massively unprofitable. Everything else at 2X was probably not very profitable either, considering that unlikely other card issuers they presumably split whatever is left of the merchant fees with WF in some form.

If they really lose 20-50% of their charge volume, would that be solely because of people who only used the card on rent day? If so, washing them out of the program seems to be the plan. But if they also lose everyday spend that people were making on top of the rent day charges, that wouldn’t seem good. But Bilt, of course, has the data that shows how people are using the card. If I had had the card, I probably would have only used it for dining (everyday, to gamble with potential rent day transfer bonuses) and rent day double earnings purchases.

In the end, profitability also very much depends on the details of the redemption deals and how cardholders use the points. Maybe those massive bonus deals on rent day transfers don’t cost them a lot if foreign carriers try to use them to break into the US market. And now few people will be able to reach high enough status to get those big bonuses in transfers, it seems.

Right - your last sentence is the key to me: now that next year I'll have no chance of getting Platinum status, I won't carry this card in my wallet anymore. I'll make my five charges per month, maybe put some things on it on Rent Day, and I'll be done. I had been putting dining on it pretty heavily, but I'll stop.

Sure, their data show where the charges went, but the psychology of a card losing its luster is going to be a little more complicated to calculate out.

I also think that all of the Bilt evangelists (me among them) who've been out there telling everyone, renter or not, to get this card will tone it down and recommend other cards instead. But they've also started advertising pretty heavily, so it's not all about word-of-mouth anymore.

Anyway, I also doubt this is the last of the negative changes unfortunately. I'm guessing we'll see something along the lines of rent only getting a point per $2 or something (which, granted, is still better than nothing).

So I was definitely pretty unprofitable for them with the vast majority of my non-rent charges coming on rent day for taxes, insurance payments, expensive travel purchases, etc. I had already secured platinum for next year with nearly 60k of non-rent spend YTD. I'm going to wait and see how the rent days promotions look for the rest of this year and early next year to decide where to put those charges going forward, but I'm skeptical it'll be worth the opportunity cost of putting it on other cards, especially if they're capping the transfers at 50k like they did with Alaska going forward. I still plan to use it for rent and dining and some smaller charges on rent day, up to the 1k cap.

I'm confused. What do only 15% of BILT users have the BILT credit card? What value do NON BILT credit card holders derive if they don't get full points for their rent?
Thanks.

I joined in June and got 5X for 5 days from the date the card arrived at home.

If you live in a property that has a partnership with Bilt (https://www.biltalliance.com, they claim 4M+ properties), I think you can pay directly with the app without the credit card. I don’t live in one so maybe someone else can provide more color.

You can also link your non-Bilt credit or debit card to Bilt and earn purchases on restaurants. Similarly, you can also earn points on Lyft.

Lastly, you can pay rent with a non-Bilt credit card and pay a 3% fee. You earn 250 points by doing this but it isn’t advisable.

I wonder how many non-renter people are there like yours truly who created an account a while ago (maybe mid/early 2023) with the idea of perhaps signing up for the credit card and in the meantime played the rent day trivia game to earn a few points every month. I never ended up getting the card, but transferred around 5000 points to AS recently (life changing, I know). And I did it twice because I also managed an account for my wife.

Without commenting about “don't get full points for their rent”, Bilt Rewards is (basically) a loyalty rewards program with transferable points, like Chase UR and AmEx MR. The Bilt Credit Card is 1 way to earn points in the program. “NON BILT credit card holders” can earn and transfer/redeem Bilt Rewards points.

SADLY, none of these explain why only 15% of BILT users have got the credit card because that's the only mechanism that gets you 1 point per $1 of rent. The avg rent in the USA is $2K, which means an easy 24,000 points each year. Why do 85% of BILT users choose to forego this?

I found a Reddit thread where it said if you live in a Bilt Alliance property as a non carhdholder you only get 250 points instead of 1x.

If you generously say that the Bilt points are worth 2cpp, 24k points per year is $480 per year or $960 every two years. If you count this as one of your 4 personal SUBs per two years, you can find better SUBs than that. Not counting the 5x for the first 5 days with max $10k spend.

The other answer is ... a lot of people find credit cards scary and don't want to apply for new ones?

SUBs they are good; but the fact is that there is simply no other no fee option that gets you 1 point = 1 rent dollar, PERIOD. And for all those who pay rent, it makes perfect sense because like you say, otherwise an average renter is leaving $480 or close to $500 annually on that table.

As I said, I don't pay rent (or HOA fees) so getting the credit card would not impact any earnings beyond the credit card. Maybe Bilt has a ton of members who, like me, don't actually rent. Also, there are probably a ton of "conservative" renters who don't want another credit card. If you visit personal finance forums, you will find plenty of people who have one or at most two cards and zero interest in getting more.

I agree that if I was a renter, I would have been more inclined to get a Bilt Mastercard, too. But if we igore the (unpredictable) rent day transfer bonuses, the earnings of the card didn't really beat other cards in my fleet (say, my CSR), so without a guaranteed SUB I was never convinced that getting the card was worthwhile for me.

Thought this was kind of interesting: my building management recently switched to one who is a Bilt partner. This showed up in the elevator a couple of days ago - so the building seems to have some incentive to promote it.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...742c97a52f.jpg