By: Tessa McLean, California Editor
many California residents, buying a home is simply out of reach. With the state’s median home price at more than $880,000, only 16% of households can even afford one.
So it’s unsurprising that many Californians have accepted their status as lifelong renters. And as the share of renter households continues growing every year, more companies are capitalizing on renters’ deep desire to get something out of their often astronomical monthly payments. The programs they’ve introduced — among them a points-earning credit card, multiple rewards programs and a property loyalty program — are enough for some people to even boast about their renter status.
Bilt Rewards is the most well-known renter rewards program. Anyone can sign up to earn points for rent payments, exchange those points with airline or hotel partners like United and Hyatt and utilize a slew of other perks the company offers. Renters can take it one step further with the Bilt Mastercard, which waives the transaction fee for paying rent by credit card and also features several other perks offered by similarly popular credit cards. Perhaps most importantly, it doesn’t matter if your landlord won’t take a credit card payment for rent — the company mails a check for you directly to your landlord.
Qualifying for the Bilt card requires a good credit score (at least 700, reports say) but for those who meet the requirements, the card seems almost too good to be true. And for the company itself, it might be. With no annual fee and a majority of users who reportedly pay their bills on time (which means they avoid paying the interest fees most credit cards make money from), the card is reportedly costing Wells Fargo $10 million a month in lost revenue. The bank has denied losses that big, but with a contract that won’t end until 2029, it’s unlikely to admit shortfalls, since the program won’t disappear anytime soon.
Michael Miraflor, 42, is a Los Angeles renter who has been taking advantage of credit cards for rewards points for years. When he heard about Bilt, he said he felt like a problem had finally been solved for him. He’s been a renter for more than 20 years and currently lives in a “high-amenity, luxury apartment building,” so he spends quite a bit on rent. He doesn’t want to be a lifelong renter — he said he’d love to own a home one day — but for now, he loves that paying rent via Bilt feels like an advantage.
He’s used the credit card for about a year, and he said he finds himself reaching for it more often to pay for everyday expenses like dining out, even more so than the credit cards he pays high annual fees for, like the American Express Platinum and the Chase Sapphire Reserve cards. Those can be great for certain rewards, he said, but they otherwise feel more “Boomer-corporate-coded” as opposed to the Bilt program, which feels “more modern and pragmatic.” He frequently uses the Bilt card to get free SoulCycle classes.
Other programs, like Piñata, a rewards system that doles out points for paying your rent through its platform, operate more like a subscription service and cost $5 a month. Piñata’s marketing is mostly targeted to people who want to increase their credit scores, as the company will report on-time payments directly to the three major credit bureaus. It says a user’s credit score could increase by more than 100 points using the service. But in the meantime, points earned on Piñata can be exchanged for gift cards to businesses like Starbucks and Walmart or to buy household goods and other products directly from Piñata’s store.
Nate Rodriguez, a 25-year-old Piñata user in Chico, said he thought the program sounded like a scam when he first heard about it from his landlord. But after almost four years of using it, he’s thrilled with how much his credit score has increased and he loves that he also gets “free stuff.” He estimates he’s received more than $300 worth of rewards over the years, between Amazon gift cards and a camera to watch his cat.
Natascha Verhaert, a marketing spokesperson for Piñata, said not being connected to a credit card is important to the company, as it doesn’t want any barriers to joining the service. She said some customers save up on Piñata to earn bigger rewards like a Samsung TV or an Apple watch, while others spend their points on everyday supplies.
“At the end of the month, you feel a difference in your financial health,” Verhaert said. “For the cost of a cup of coffee, you can make big progress.”
Piñata has been available to landlords since 2020, but launched in May for any renter, not just those whose landlords offer payment through the system. Landlords can customize the program to incentivize certain initiatives, like offering additional points for early lease renewals and referring friends, or small tasks like changing air filters in the unit regularly, Verhaert said.
Verhaert declined to share how many California users the company has, as did Bilt, but said the product is most popular in San Diego, Sacramento and Los Angeles. The company has agreements with property management groups in many California cities, she said.
And it’s those large metropolitan areas that have the biggest rentership rates in the country, with San Jose taking the top spot in the U.S. at 52% of households, according to a recent Redfin report. Los Angeles came in second at 50.8% of households, while San Diego (48%), Fresno (47.4%) and San Francisco (42.2%) all made it into the top 10 cities with renter households, out of the country’s 75 largest metropolitan areas.
For those whose dream is to live in a Southern California mall, renters at Caruso properties can earn rewards by paying their rent through the company’s own loyalty program, Caruso Signature. Paying rent on time and signing or renewing a lease can earn users “Caruso Coins,” which renters can spend at Caruso-owned retail, dining or hotel properties. Examples include free tickets to the Grove’s AMC theater, a $25 gift card to a steakhouse in the Americana mall or even a one-night stay at Rosewood Miramar Beach, the swanky Montecito hotel. About 80% of renters at Caruso properties are members of the loyalty program, a Caruso spokesperson told SFGATE, and dining rewards are the most popular redemption item among residents.
Caruso CEO Corinne Verdery said it was worth it for the company to build its own program so it can stay closely aligned with its customers. The company surveyed residents to determine which perks and rewards to offer and learned that existing residents would be more likely to refer new residents if they got rewarded for it. The loyalty program benefits the company, too — every time a renter uses it, Caruso gains a better understanding of how its residents spend their money at its properties and can tailor resident experiences based on that data. Points redemption is going up every year, Verdery said, which is a signal to her that the program is working.
“It is unique and one of a kind,” she said.
Similar to Piñata, Incentco, another rewards platform, works with landlords to provide incentives to renters, who then earn points. Co-founder Gerry Wiatrowski told the Wall Street Journal in August that “roughly a million renters get rewards through Incentco.” The points renters accumulate may seem like a lot, but they’re a small fraction of a rental payment. Still, that hasn’t stopped Incentco’s business from growing.
“It’s the psychology of points,” he told the WSJ. “The perceived value is higher.”
For Joe McReynolds, a 38-year-old national security researcher who uses the Bilt credit card to pay for an apartment he rents in New York, these programs are “a metaphor for modern consumer capitalism.” He said he earned around 300,000 points from Bilt last year, which he transferred to airline miles, earning him several round-trip tickets to Tokyo, where his partner lives.
“My parents have always been skeptical of this stuff, saying, ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch,’” he said with a laugh. “But there are all sorts of free lunches if you figure out the system to take advantage of the generosity of mega corporations.”
