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You’ll earn 2,500 points each time you refer a friend to the Bilt Mastercard. For every five referrals, you earn 10,000 bonus points, up to 2,000,000 points. You can refer friends to the card through the website or app.

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Elite status through Bilt Rewards

Bilt offers four status tiers. Here’s a quick overview:

Your member status is based on the total points earned in a calendar year. Elite status earned between Jan. 1 and June 30 each year will expire on Jan. 31 of the following year. Meanwhile, status earned between July 1 and Dec. 31 will remain active for the rest of the year it was earned and the entire following year.

Related: Quick Points: How to earn ‘interest’ on your rewards balance with Bilt

Redeeming Bilt Rewards points: Poor-value options

The Bilt Rewards loyalty program gives you many ways to use your points, though not all carry equal value.

If you want to extract the maximum value from your Bilt Rewards points, you’ll likely want to avoid some of these less valuable redemption options:

Use points for Amazon purchases

You can select your Bilt Mastercard on Amazon.com as a payment method and redeem your points to cover all or a portion of your purchase at checkout. However, Bilt points are worth 0.7 cents each when used this way. For example, you’ll need approximately 14,300 Bilt points to cover a $100 Amazon purchase. Compare that to the potential estimated value of 1.8 cents apiece (or greater) and it’s not necessarily the best value.

Shop the Bilt Collection

The Bilt Collection is a curated list of items, including art, home decor and apparel. The value per point will vary but rarely exceed more than 1 cent per point, so you should likely pass on this option.

Redeem your points for fitness classes

Fitness enthusiasts can redeem their Bilt points to attend name-brand classes like SoulCycle, Solid Core, Y7 Studio and Rumble Boxing. The value will depend on the class you select but hovers around just 1 cent per point.

Pay your rent with points

A potentially enticing option with your points is to save them to help cover your next rent payment. However, this is only available if you live in a Bilt Rewards Alliance property or opt for check payments. And even worse, the redemption value is just 0.55 cents per point.

Related: 5 common purchases you should never redeem miles for

Redeeming your Bilt Rewards points: Medium-value options

The following redemption options will get you a decent value with a redemption rate of at least 1 cent apiece:

Use your points to save up for a down payment on a home

Bilt offers the unique ability for users to save up their points toward a down payment on a home one day. If you opt for this route, your Bilt points are valued at 1.5 cents each toward a down payment.

Redeem for travel on the Bilt Travel portal

You can use the Bilt Travel Portal to offset the cost of flights, stays, rental cars or activities — at a rate of 1.25 cents per point.

Transferring to airline and hotel partners: Best value

Nothing beats the outsize value of transferring your points to Bilt’s airline and hotel partners. Bilt has 14 airline and hotel transfer partners. Bilt Rewards is the only transferable points program to offer American Airlines AAdvantage as a transfer partner, which is one of our favorite options for some pretty amazing sweet spots.

It’s free to join these loyalty programs, even if you’ve never flown or stayed with any. Plus, Bilt gives cardholders 100 bonus points for each loyalty program you link to your account. This is a no-brainer and can easily get you 1,400 bonus points with minimal effort.

You can easily get 1.8 cents per point in value — or perhaps much more — and score a lie-flat airplane seat or a luxurious hotel stay by transferring your Bilt points to the right programs, all at a simple, 1:1 transfer ratio:

There are some particularly high-value loyalty programs that you can leverage for maximum value. Here are a few ideas to get you going:

• Through American Airlines AAdvantage, you can book the famous Qatar Airways Qsuite,  a long-haul business class product, between the U.S. and Doha one-way for just 70,000 points.
• Book a round-trip United economy ticket to Hawaii for just 15,000 miles through Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles.
• Using Iberia Plus, book a one-way business-class flight from the East Coast to Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport (MAD) for as little as 34,000 points.
• Transfer 47,500 points to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club to book ANA business class one-way from the East Coast to Japan.
• Transfer your points to World of Hyatt and score a stay at the ultra-luxurious Park Hyatt St. Kitts Christophe Harbour for 25,000-35,000 points per night or at an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean (like the Hyatt Zilara Rose Hall in Jamaica).

Bilt Rewards has historically offered some of the best transfer bonuses we’ve seen during Rent Day (the first of every month). This includes a 100% transfer bonus to Air France-KLM Flying Blue and HawaiianMiles.

Simply put, the options are endless. And because so many of Bilt’s transfer partners overlap with existing transferable points programs, you can refer to our guides as inspiration to maximize programs like Air Canada Aeroplan, Air France-KLM Flying Blue, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club and so many more.

Related: 7 of the best airline award chart sweet spots

Bottom line

Bilt Rewards presents an exceptional value proposition for both renters and non-renters. Bilt has established partnerships with some of the more lucrative airline and hotel loyalty programs, enabling you to extract extraordinary value from your points. Your points transfer seamlessly at a straightforward 1:1 ratio and most programs process the transfers instantly.

Even if you aren’t renting or don’t want to apply for the Bilt Mastercard, you can earn lots of points by linking your Lyft account, enrolling in Bilt Dining and booking travel through the Bilt Travel Portal.

Additional reporting by Juan Ruiz.

See Bilt Mastercard rates and fees here.

See Bilt Mastercard rewards and benefits here.