The President recently signed the Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act into law. This bipartisan legislation protects prospective homebuyers by curbing the sale of "trigger leads"—their personal financial information—to other lenders without consent, and will go into effect on March 5, 2026.

Since the mid 1990’s, the three major credit bureaus have sold trigger leads to lenders whenever a consumer had their credit pulled when applying for a mortgage. In 1970, The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) was passed, which allowed the bureaus to sell prescreened lists of consumers to companies making "firm offers of credit," such as mortgage companies.

If you have had your credit pulled for a mortgage application recently, you most likely received unwanted emails, calls and ‘junk mail’ from many lenders because of these trigger leads. In some instances, these messages would mislead you into thinking they came from you own bank!

The Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act will greatly reduce the volume of these offers, so the good news is you won’t be inundated with unwanted mortgage offers the next time you apply for a home loan!