Bilt, the program that lets you earn rewards for paying rent, just launched a travel portal that makes it easy to redeem points at a high value

The Bilt Travel Portal, powered by Expedia, is a useful and flexible booking tool for those who don't want to transfer points to airline and hotel partners.

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• Bilt Rewards has launched its own travel portal for booking flights, hotels, rental cars, and activities.
• The Bilt Travel Portal allows members to redeem points at a rate of 1.25 cents each.
• You can even book theme park stays and tickets, and compare prices to booking award flights with select programs.
• Read Insider's guide to the best travel rewards credit cards

It's been just over a year since the Bilt Rewards loyalty program and Bilt Mastercard® launched, and it's seen tons of improvements in that short time. Bilt allows you to earn points for paying rent with no fees, and the rewards you earn from the program (and from spending on the Bilt Mastercard®) are quite valuable, particularly for travelers.

Until now, redeeming Bilt points for travel has been limited to transferring your rewards to airline and hotel partners. Some of the partners are incredibly useful — American Airlines AAdvantage and World of Hyatt in particular — but if you're not a loyalty program whiz or hate navigating award charts and availability, transferring points might not be appealing.

Now there's a much easier option for using these points for travel with the launch of the Bilt Travel Portal. Powered by Expedia, the Bilt portal functions much like other online travel agencies or bank travel portals. You can redeem your rewards for flights, hotels, rental cars, and activities with access to the same inventory as you'd see on Expedia.com. Or, you can pay by credit card (including the Bilt Mastercard®) and earn more Bilt points that way.

For folks who don't want to fuss with award travel, the Bilt Travel Portal is a simpler option for using points. And it has a couple of tricks up its sleeve that make it even more compelling. Here's a peek at what you can expect.

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.

Bilt Travel Portal: Book flights, hotels, and more

If you're a Bilt Rewards member (even if you don't have the Bilt Mastercard®), you'll be able to redeem your Bilt points at a rate of 1.25 cents each when you book through the Bilt Travel Portal. That's a better value than most other credit card travel portals offer (usually 1 cent per mile or point), and it's the same as the rate you'll get with the popular Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card and Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card when booking through the Chase travel portal.

You can also pay in cash, or a combination of cash and points. When you use the Bilt Mastercard® to pay, you'll earn 2x points on the cash portion of your purchase, and if you use a different credit card you'll earn 1 point per dollar. This flexibility allows you to use your rewards to offset the cost of a flight, hotel, car, or activity, even if you don't have enough points to cover the whole thing.

To access the Bilt Travel Portal, members will need to visit travel.biltrewards.com and sign in with their credentials. Alternately, you can access the portal by opening the Bilt app and opening the "Travel" tab (if you already have the Bilt app, you'll need to update it before you see the new travel option).

Booking through the Bilt app is actually the better choice, because it offers a very neat feature you won't find on the desktop version. When you search for a flight in the app, you'll be able to toggle between the cash price and real-time award availability for the same flight using United, Air Canada Aeroplan, or American Airlines miles. This is super handy if you're trying to decide whether it's better to redeem points through the portal or (potentially) spend fewer points by transferring to a partner for an award flight.

If you're not yet a member of Bilt Rewards and want to earn points for paying rent, head to the Bilt Rewards page to sign up. Over 2 million properties participate in the Bilt Rewards alliance, but even if your landlord isn't included, you can still earn points for paying rent by using the Bilt Mastercard® through the Bilt app (Bilt sends your landlord a check, and there are no fees for doing so). 

To learn more about the Bilt Mastercard®, check out our full Bilt Mastercard review.