On March 5, 2026, the practical ban on mortgage industry trigger leads—signed into law in September 2025 with essentially unanimous support in Congress—has officially taken effect. This change is meant to ease one problem that homebuyers searching for a mortgage face.
Trigger leads are a practice where one of the three major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) can sell information that a consumer is seeking a mortgage application. The credit bureaus receive this information when a mortgage lender pulls the applicant’s credit report, and so can sell it and the applicants’ personal contact information to competing mortgage brokers or lenders. Thus, after applying for a mortgage, an applicant could be swamped with texts, emails and other communications from those rival lenders.
The major change, enacted in the Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act, is that credit agencies cannot sell a mortgage applicant’s information to any third-party mortgage lenders unless the mortgage transaction is a “firm offer of credit or insurance” (“firm offer” meaning a guaranteed offer based on a pre-screening of a customer’s credit). The credit reporting agencies must also obtain the mortgage applicant’s consent to have their information sold as a trigger lead, unless a competing mortgage lender has a preexisting banking relationship with the applicant.
A ban on this practice was widely supported within the mortgage and real estate industry, with advocates and stakeholders pointing out privacy concerns, as well as the nuisance of a sudden—and often persistent—barrage of inquiries faced by applicants.
Financial lending platform LendingTree had lobbied in support of the legislation. In a statement forwarded to RISMedia earlier this month, Patrick Brennan—head of government relations at LendingTree—praised the practical ban of trigger leads as a consumer-friendly change.
“The ban on the sale of trigger leads is an important step toward improving the consumer experience when shopping for a loan. Consumers should be able to compare offers without facing a wave of unsolicited calls and offers triggered by their application activity,” said Brennan. “This change will help create a more secure, less confusing experience while preserving fair competition that benefits borrowers.”
The law had also been supported by the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) and the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). In an op-ed written for RISMedia, Matthew Emery—NAR’s senior policy representative on financial services—described the practice of trigger leads as “abusive.”
“Consumers currently have no knowledge that their data is being sold, nor by whom, and they have very limited avenues to opt out. Often, consumers believe their real estate broker or agent, mortgage lender, mortgage broker or another party in the transaction has sold their information when, in fact, that is not the case,” Emery wrote.
He further framed the passage of the Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act as a triumph of collaboration, due to both the different sectors of the industry lobbying on behalf of it and its bipartisan support in Congress itself.
