What am I missing? Bilt’s Palladium Card looks better even without rent points.

~~The running theory is that they’ll begin passing the processing fee of ~3% to charge rent. Which you’d have to offset with enough spending to have 4% of your spending earn enough to pay for the 3% rent charge~~

Edit: misread -> see below reply

You’re correct, assuming you can use BILT cash properly outside of rent payments. This is now not a rent card anymore lol.

This card is a weird curve where the returns on spending too little or too much are not as good, the sweet spot is spending 0.5x Rent < Spend < 1x Rent

Agree. I’m in it for the points on rent/mortgage, so a bit different from what you’re asking, but still looked at this vs. my platinum and short of the few credits I love from amex (lululemon, clear, etc.) I think Bilt will come out slightly ahead. Do we know yet what credits/brands they might offer in addition to the 4% cash back?

Feeling the same way as you are. I absolutely get why seemingly all of the legacy Bilt users are upset at the leaked cards, since they heavily nerfed rent returns by eliminating the fee waiver on rent payments, but as someone who doesn’t rent and has never engaged with Bilt at all, the Palladium looks really compelling.

– The annual fee seems relatively easy to offset as long as I can find a non-rent payment fee way to use Bilt Cash. It seems like it’s usable in their travel portal or for a few other things, so that might be a viable path, but I want to read more on it first.
– 2X Bilt points, which transfer 1:1 to Alaska or Hyatt points, would be a fantastic non-category return.
– 4% Bilt Cash is basically a cherry on top, and potentially a pretty lucrative one.

Potential drawbacks:
– I’m curious what the AU fee looks like, along with whether the priority pass includes restaurants.
– Given the $495 AF, I’m guessing/hoping it’ll come with decent travel protections, no FTF, etc – that stuff is pretty much table stakes at that level. If it doesn’t, that might be a pretty serious drawback.
– Is the Bilt Gold status just a first year thing or a continuing benefit on the card? A hotel program seems like a fairly mandatory feature to have on a $495 AF but it seems like theirs is only available with Bilt Gold status.

I’m keeping an eye on the true launch next week to see what comes out of it, but if it’s as rumored and the above questions are answered in a positive direction, I’ll probably pick one up.