The addition of legislation reining in mortgage trigger leads to the Senate’s Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) garnered praise from the real estate finance industry.
Senate Amendment 2358 would add language from S. 3502, the “Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act of 2024,” to the proposal. This language has been championed as a means of helping to protect borrowers’ privacy by restricting credit reporting agencies’ ability to sell data about consumers’ credit activity and contact information to lenders and other creditors.
“MBA has led a diverse set of coalition partners to help advance needed reforms that would curb trigger lead abuses while preserving their use in appropriately limited circumstances during a real estate transaction,” Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) President and CEO Bob Broeksmit said in a statement. “We commend the bipartisanship leadership of Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) and Chairman Jack Reed (D-R.I.), along with their 40 bipartisan Senate cosponsors, to advance this carefully-calibrated consumer protection amendment as part of the NDAA debate.”
The trade organization wrote to senators in July, urging them to cosponsor S. 3502 and vote to incorporate its provisions into the NDAA legislation. Reed introduced the bill last December.
“MBA will continue to work with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle — including trigger lead reform champions Rep. John Rose (R-TN) and Ritchie Torres (D-NY) – to highlight the importance of preserving this important proposal during the forthcoming Senate debate and eventual NDAA negotiations between House and Senate leaders later this year,” Broeksmit added.
The language of the bill-turned-amendment is substantially similar to that of a bipartisan bill introduced by Reps. John Rose (R-Tenn.) and Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) in 2022 dubbed the Protecting Consumers from Abusive Mortgage Leads Act (H.R. 4198).