In the miles & points world, many of us are familiar with the Bilt Mastercard® (review), which is a valuable no annual fee card that allows you to pay your rent by credit card and earn rewards, even if your landlord doesn’t ordinarily allow no-fee credit card payments.
For a long time, Bilt has been teasing that it will start offering points for mortgage payments. While there are still more questions than answers, we’re starting to get more details of what that will look like.
Bilt partners with mortgage lender to offer points for mortgages
Bilt has announced a new partnership with United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM), the nation’s largest mortgage lender. With this, UWM will be the first mortgage platform where customers can earn rewards on their mortgage payments. UWM is investing $100 million in Bilt as part of this partnership.
Bilt claims that this is the final piece in its vision to transform the housing lifecycle — from the first apartment through home ownership — into a rewards opportunity.
This partnership circles around integrating rewards into the largest wholesale mortgage lender in the country, giving brokers a new way to differentiate and stay connected to clients long after closing. It’s also highlighted how this will empower mortgage brokers with next generation tools — every loan originated through UWM will include embedded Bilt benefits that reward clients monthly, including things like move-in gifts, milestone celebrations, and strategic refinance reminders, all tied back to the initial broker.
The partnership is expected to fully launch in early 2026, which is when details will be announced regarding the exact amount of points offered, and the rewards construct.
Here’s how Bilt CEO Ankur Jain describes this:
“We’ve built Bilt to transform every stage of the housing journey into an opportunity. Our members have been building credit and earning rewards as renters, saving those Bilt Points toward down payments, and using our platform to find and buy homes. With UWM, we’re completing the circle—they’ll continue earning rewards with every mortgage payment. This is the full lifecycle of housing, all on one platform.”
Here’s how UWM CEO Mat Ishbia describes this:
“This partnership with Bilt is a game-changer for our broker partners, consumers and the industry as a whole. By integrating Bilt into our servicing platform, we are reimagining how a borrower views and thinks about their mortgage payments, while also creating an unmatched lead generation tool and exceptional client engagement for brokers. This will redefine industry standards, putting relationship- building at the center of mortgage servicing and elevate the wholesale channel to a new level.”
This is a logical development… let’s see the details
When Bilt was promising it would start awarding points for mortgage payments, many of us wondered what the details would look like, and how the company would make the economics work. Bilt has certainly been able to show an incredible amount of growth (which is how the company now has a valuation of over $10 billion… ummm, wow), and I imagine this is part of that.
I figured Bilt wouldn’t just offer blanket points for all mortgage payments, as it does with rent payments. So it makes sense that what’s happening is that Bilt is partnering with a major lender, and will offer rewards for payments.
The concept of incentivizing going with a certain mortgage lender is nothing new, and we’ve seen loyalty programs previously offer points for that. The big question, of course, is just how lucrative this will be. Will homeowners be able to earn one point per dollar of mortgage payment? That seems like the best case scenario, but I wouldn’t assume that’s what will happen.
Presumably Bilt will be looking to partner with more companies on mortgage payments, so we’ll see how that plays out. For that matter, there’s obviously a cost to offering these perks, so will UWM be able to have competitive interest rates while offering these perks, or will this essentially be a situation where you have forgo a lower rate to earn rewards?
After all, especially for something like a mortgage, you want to be sure you’re getting the lowest rate possible, and rewards considerations should be secondary. So for now we’ll mark this as “developing,” but it’s nice to see that points for mortgage payments are on the horizon.
Bottom line
Bilt has announced that it will start awarding points for mortgage payments as of 2026, thanks to a partnership with UWM, the nation’s largest mortgage lender. The exact details remain to be seen, including just how many points members will be able to earn for mortgage payments, and how competitive rates will be.
It sounds like Bilt won’t be awarding points for all mortgage payments (like it does with rent), but instead, that this will be built up through partnerships.
What do you make of Bilt getting into the mortgage space?