When you apply for a mortgage, you mysteriously will get bombarded with marketing phone calls, texts and emails from “lenders”, sometimes upwards of 30 in a day. How does this happen, you may ask?

The credit bureaus SELL your information, to mortgage marketing companies, when your credit report is pulled. These are known as “trigger leads”. Your mortgage lender is not selling your information, it is the Credit Bureaus who are. Something is finally being done about it. Check it out below!

A bipartisan duo of members in the U.S. House of Representatives this week introduced a bill targeting the “abusive” uses of mortgage trigger leads, a companion bill to a previously-introduced bill in the U.S. Senate.

House Resolution (H.R.) 7297, also known as the “Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act,” seeks to “amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act to prevent consumer reporting agencies from furnishing consumer reports under certain circumstances, and for other purposes,” according to the bill’s official entry on Congress.gov. It is sponsored by Rep. John Rose (R-Tenn.) and co-sponsored by Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.).

“Buying a home is stressful enough for many consumers,” Rep. Rose said in a statement. “The last thing most folks want is to be annoyed incessantly by the constant barrage of emails, text messages, and phone calls after they apply for a mortgage. My bill would put an end to this shady and confusing practice and restore data privacy for homebuyers.”

There is an exploitive element to the way trigger leads work today that needs to be corrected, Torres said.

“Trigger leads exploit consumers’ financial inquiries, turning them into commodities sold without consent. We must empower homebuyers, not bombard them with predatory calls,” he said. “This bipartisan legislation takes a crucial step in safeguarding consumer privacy and choice in the mortgage process.”

For more information on how you can opt out of solicitication, please email me at mchurch@acmllc.com.