Best Ways to Earn Credit Card Points on Rent and Mortgage Payments

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• You can use a credit card to pay your rent or mortgage, but you’ll usually pay fees to do so.
• It can be worth it if the rewards you’ll earn outweigh the fees charged for using a credit card.
• The Bilt Mastercard®
  is a fee-free way to pay rent and earn valuable points, but mortgages aren’t an option.
• Read Insider’s guide to the best rewards credit cards.

For most people, housing is by far their most significant living expense. In fact, according to the 2019 Census Bureau’s housing survey, the average rent payment is $1,487, while the median mortgage payment comes to $1,200 per month.

Imagine if you could turn that considerable expense into an almost-free vacation. While it used to be impossible to charge your rent or mortgage payments to a credit card to earn points, that has changed in recent years.

Several services let you pay your housing expenses with a credit card, and there’s even a credit card designed for this very purpose. If you’re looking to maximize your biggest expense, here’s how to earn points on rent and mortgage payments and the best credit cards to use.

We’re focused here on the rewards and perks that come with each card. These cards won’t be worth it if you’re paying interest or late fees. When using a credit card, it’s important to pay your balance in full each month, make payments on time, and only spend what you can afford to pay.

Services to pay your rent and mortgage with a credit card

Most banks don’t accept credit cards for mortgage payments and you often can’t pay your landlord directly with a card. You can still earn points on your rent and mortgage payments by utilizing a processing service. These platforms will let you pay with a credit card and send a bank transfer or check to your landlord. 

Most of these platforms charge a fee, though there are ways to reduce or eliminate these fees altogether. Here’s a look at each service and what you’ll pay to earn points on rent and mortgage payments:

Bilt Rewards

Bilt Rewards is a newcomer but has already made a big splash with a competitive loyalty program and a rewards credit card. Bilt lets members earn points on rent payments, fee-free. Simply join Bilt Rewards and earn 250 points per rent payment made in the app. 

If you’re a Bilt Mastercard® holder, you’ll earn 1 point per dollar spent on rent, up to $50,000 per year. And if your landlord doesn’t appear in Bilt’s extensive database of property management companies, Bilt will still let you pay with a credit card and send a check or bank transfer on your behalf. 

You don’t have to be a Bilt Mastercard® holder to use the Bilt rewards program. You’ll just be limited to earning 250 points per payment and you can’t use the bank transfer/check option if your landlord isn’t listed in the Bilt network. 

The card also lets you earn additional points on everyday spending. It offers 3x points on dining, 2x on travel, and 1X on rent payments every month (up to $50,000 per year). It also lets you earn points on referrals (2,500 points per successful referral), and now every fifth successful referral earns you an additional 10,000 points (up to 2,025,000 referral points per year). 

When you’re ready to redeem your points, you can transfer them to 14 airline and hotel loyalty programs including American AAdvantage, United MileagePlus, and World of Hyatt at a 1:1 ratio. 

Overall, both the Bilt Rewards program and the credit card are excellent products, considering they earn valuable rewards in common spending categories with no annual fee. 

Venmo

If your landlord accepts Venmo, you can earn points on rent payments by sending the money directly. The only downside is that Venmo charges a 3% fee on credit card transactions. This is really only worth doing if you’re trying to meet a minimum spending requirement for a large credit card welcome bonus. You’ll pay a $44.61 fee for a $1,487 rent payment, which could be worthwhile in certain circumstances.

For example, the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card currently has a welcome bonus offer of 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That bonus is worth around $1,080 in travel, based on Insider’s valuation of Chase points, when you transfer points to Chase’s airline and hotel partners.

So if you’re spending $120 to knock out the spending requirement via rent payments, it’s worth it because of the outsized return. Still, you should explore other options before going this route.

Plastiq

Plastiq lets you pay both mortgage and rent with a credit card for a 2.85% fee and accepts all major issuers. Plastiq is unique because it runs regular promotions that waive or reduce transaction fees. This can make earning points on rent and mortgage payments much cheaper. 

In the past, Plastiq offered discounted fees on payments made with Mastercard. The best way to make sure you don’t miss out on these promotions is to opt-in to receive email notifications from Plastiq. 

Credit cards to use on rent and mortgage payments

Once you have a program picked out that lets you pay your rent or mortgage with a credit card, you’ll want to choose a credit card that offers maximum rewards. Most of the above-mentioned platforms won’t trigger category bonuses. So you’ll want to use a credit card that earns more than 1 point per dollar spent on all spending or spending-based rewards. 

Citi Double Cash

The Citi® Double Cash Card is an excellent option for earning rewards on rent and mortgage payments. The card effectively earns 2 points per dollar — worth 2% cash back—  on all spending (1 point per dollar when you spend and 1 point per dollar when you pay the balance off).

The Citi® Double Cash Card doesn’t usually offer a welcome bonus, but it’s currently offering new cardholders $200 cash back after spending $1,500 on purchases in the first 6 months of account opening. 

The best part? If you also have a Citi Premier® Card or Citi Prestige® Card
(no longer available to new applicants), you can combine your ThankYou points. From there, you can transfer your points to Citi’s full range of airline and hotel partners to book award travel.

Citi ThankYou is an excellent program with valuable partners like Avianca Lifemiles, Flying Blue, and Turkish Miles&Smiles. These programs offer some exceptional sweet spot awards that are significantly cheaper than most domestic reward programs. 

• 7,500 Turkish miles each way for an economy class ticket to Hawaii 
• 15,000 Flying Blue miles each way for an economy ticket to the Caribbean
• 44,000 Etihad Guest miles one-way for Royal Air Maroc business class between the East Coast and Morocco
• 50,000 Virgin Atlantic points one-way for Delta One Suites to Europe
• 87,000 Avianca Lifemiles miles one-way for Lufthansa first class to Europe, without fuel surcharges

By charging your rent or mortgage to the Citi® Double Cash Card, these awards could be easier to reach.

Capital One Venture and Venture X

The Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card and Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card earn 2x points on almost all spending, including rent and mortgage payments.

What’s great about these Capital One Venture cards is how flexible the rewards are. You can apply your Capital One miles towards travel purchases made with your card at 1 cent each or transfer them to over a dozen airline and hotel partners. These partners include Air Canada Aeroplan, British Airways, and Wyndham Rewards, giving you lots of solid options to redeem points for domestic or international travel. 

Amex Blue Business Plus

 The Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express is another underrated yet exceptional rewards card. It earns 2 Amex Membership Rewards points per dollar on the first $50,000 in purchases every year (then 1x) and it’s a great card to keep in your wallet since it has no annual fee. The only downside is that this is a business card and not everyone likes mixing their personal and business spending. 

However, if you don’t mind parsing out a single monthly expense from your business card spending, then it can be worthwhile. After all, Amex Membership Rewards are some of the most valuable points on the market, with 20 airline and hotel transfer partners.