Bilt Palladium Card review: A standalone travel card for renters and homeowners

The Bilt Palladium Card can be an excellent choice if you’re looking for a luxury travel card, especially if you’re not involved in other rewards card ecosystems yet. From a welcome bonus to travel perks, this card has plenty to offer even if you don’t use it to earn points on housing payments.

Welcome offer: Multiple ways to get value

The welcome bonus on this card consists of two parts. First, you’ll receive a $300 bonus in Bilt Cash upon approval. Additionally, you can earn 50,000 bonus Bilt Points and Gold status after spending $4,000 on non-housing purchases in the first three months. The status provides extra benefits, including transfer bonuses, earning interest on your points balance and more.

This is an appealing offer that ensures you get rewarded before you even spend anything. Further, if you do earn the 50,000-point bonus, Gold status provides an opportunity to continuously get extra value out of the card since it’s valid for the rest of the calendar year and all of the following year.

Redemptions: Plenty of options

Bilt Points are a flexible rewards currency, and cardholders get multiple options for how to spend them. While you’ll get the most bang for your buck redeeming for travel, especially if you transfer to one of Bilt’s 24 partners, aspiring homeowners might find a different option interesting: The Bilt Palladium offers 1.5 cents per point if you use your Bilt Points for a down payment on a home.

Other redemption options include:

• Rent payments
• Principal-only mortgage payments
• Fitness classes
• Statement credits
• Amazon purchases
• Gift cards
• Lyft rides
• Home Design Collection purchases

These options, however, only yield 1 cent per point or less in value. 

Travel perks: Valuable for frequent travelers

The Bilt Palladium comes with competitive travel benefits. You can receive $400 in Bilt Travel Hotel credits annually (up to $200 from Jan. 1 to June 30 and up to $200 July 1 to Dec. 31). Note that the credits only apply to Bilt Travel hotel bookings of at least two nights. Additionally, the card provides Priority Pass airport lounge access for you and up to two guests — free of charge. 

As a World Legend Mastercard, it also offers travel insurance perks*, including:

• Trip Cancellation and Interruption Protection
• Trip Delay Reimbursement
• Lost or Damaged Luggage Insurance
• Baggage Delay Insurance
• MasterRental Insurance

However, certain popular benefits are lacking. For example, the card doesn’t offer credits for TSA PreCheck or Global Entry application fees or any other perks for expedited airport security. These are pretty common benefits for cards of this caliber.

*A maximum benefit amount and certain restrictions and limitations apply.  Please review the Mastercard Guide to Benefits for details.

The Bilt Palladium can be a great standalone card if you’re willing to make the effort to get the most out of it. That said, it does require a bit of work — and spending, which makes it less than ideal if you carry other rewards credit cards already.

Rewards system: Complex and demanding

The main selling point of the Bilt cards is the ability to earn rewards on housing payments. While that’s attractive in theory, it’s also pretty complicated in practice. 

There are two ways you can earn rewards on your rent and mortgage payments with the Bilt Palladium card. The first option allows you to earn points without paying a 3% processing fee, but in this case, your rewards rate depends on how much non-housing spending you put on the card. If you spend the same amount or more than your rent or mortgage payment, you’ll earn 1.25X points. Spending at least 75% of the payment earns 1X points, and 50% — 0.75X points. Finally, if you spend at least 25% of your monthly housing payment on other purchases, you’ll earn 0.5X points on your rent or mortgage. And if you don’t meet the minimum spending threshold, you’ll only receive 250 points per housing payment.

For example, let’s say your mortgage payment is $2,000. That means you need to spend at least $2,000 to earn the maximum amount of rewards. If you only spend $1,000 on non-housing purchases, you’ll earn 0.75X points instead.

The second option involves Bilt Cash, which is separate from your Bilt Points. You earn this reward currency on non-housing purchases, with this option, housing rewards are capped at 1X points.

Annual fees: May be excessive for some cardholders

Paired with the spending you need to put on the card to unlock housing rewards, a $495 annual fee might make you rethink applying for this card (See Rates & Fees). While it’s comparable to other cards in this space, those cards also come with simpler rewards systems — and potentially more valuable perks.

Plus, if you’re hoping to earn rewards on your housing payments but already have other rewards cards, the Bilt Palladium might not pair with them well. You’ll have to transfer a good portion of your spending to it just to unlock housing rewards, diminishing your rewards on other cards. And the high annual fee will only add the pressure to spend enough to justify carrying the card.

If you like what the Bilt Palladium has to offer but aren’t sure it’s worth the annual fee, you may want to look into the Bilt Obsidian Card or the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card instead — both offer boosted rewards rates in everyday categories and a bit more flexibility for the less-frequent traveler. 

The Bilt Palladium allows you to earn rewards on housing payments, but you’ll have to do some math and ensure you spend enough on non-housing purchases. The card comes with competitive travel perks and boasts a long list of transfer partners and redemption options. It can be an excellent option for:

• People looking for a standalone rewards card to use for most of their spending
• High spenders who travel frequently

*The information about the Bilt Mastercard® has been collected independently by Bankrate.com. The card details have not been reviewed or approved by the card issuer.

We rate credit cards using a proprietary card scoring system that ranks each card’s estimated average rewards rate, estimated annual earnings, welcome bonus value, APR, fees, perks and more against those of other cards in its primary category.

Each card feature is assigned a weighting based on how important it is to people looking for a card in a given category. These features are then scored based on how they rank relative to the features on other cards in the category. Based on these calculations, each card receives an overall rating of 1-5 stars (with 5 being the highest possible score and 1 being the lowest). 

We analyzed over 150 of the most popular rewards and cash back cards to determine where each stacked up based on their value, cost, benefits and more. Here are some of the key factors that influenced this card’s overall score and how the score influenced our review: