A New Bill Could End The Spam Mortgage Calls You Are Getting

• August 25th

by UrbanTurf Staff

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A bill that could be signed into law as early as next month would curb the abusive use of so‑called "trigger leads"—situations where a credit bureau sells a mortgage applicant’s personal information to third‑party lenders or marketers without their knowledge or explicit consent.

Introduced in April, the Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act proposed amending the Fair Credit Reporting Act to ban the furnishing of trigger leads unless certain conditions are met: the lender must either have a firm offer of credit, hold a current relationship with the consumer (e.g., existing mortgage or account), or the consumer must explicitly opt in.

Trigger leads have become a common occurrence, often with consumers being inundated with unsolicited and sometimes deceptive offers via calls, texts, or emails shortly after applying for a home loan, contributing to confusion and frustration.

The bill was passed by the Senate with unanimous consent by mid‑June, and the House followed suit a week later.

If President Trump signs the bill into law in September, the act will take effect six months after enactment.  The law also mandates a Government Accountability Office study on the value and impact of text‑based trigger leads, to be delivered to Congress within a year.

While the bill is seen as a data privacy victory, critics caution that without rigorous enforcement, spammers and bad actors may find workarounds—or that the law may shield large lenders from competition by restricting legitimate outreach. 

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/a_new_bill_could_end_the_spam_mortgage_calls_you_are_getting/23793.