Credit checks alert mortgage telemarketers

BOSTON - As a former mortgage broker, Adryenn Ashley thought she knew what to expect when she refinanced her house in March. Yet Ashley was unprepared for one twist she encountered: A barrage of phone calls and e-mails from rival lenders vying to sell her a better mortgage.

Some of the callers apparently knew just how much money she was borrowing. Others made misleading come-ons such as “We need to update your information,” or “We need to complete your application,” Ashley said.

“I have privacy concerns over that,” she said from her home in Petaluma, Calif. “My information should be confidential.”

These days, mortgage shoppers like Ashley are supreme telemarketing targets, thanks to “trigger leads” that credit report-ing bureaus sell to lenders the instant a consumer’s credit file is pulled by a loan officer. So when Ashley’s lender checked her credit to prepare her loan, dozens of other mortgage companies were tipped off. These alerts can be had for a few bucks per name if bought in bulk.

This is legal — though not necessarily for much longer. A few states have been exploring restrictions on the practice, and last week Minnesota’s governor approved a block on most trigger leads. A ban is pending in Massachusetts.

Congressional action is brewing as well. The House Financial Services Committee, whose chairman is Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., is investigating the issue in advance of hearings it expects to hold on credit-reporting agencies, said committee spokesman Steven Adamske.

Such hearings could find that trigger leads have drawn powerful enemies.

The proposed ban in Massachusetts, for example, was floated by the state bankers association. Its chief operating officer, Kevin Kiley, fears “the trust that has been established between the bank and the consumer has been essentially undercut” because of trigger leads.

“Why should a bank be in a situation where it invests millions of dollars in a branch network and advertising, if I can go out and just buy leads?” Kiley said. (On Web message boards frequented by mortgage brokers, the act is called “snaking a deal.”)

The National Association of Mortgage Brokers, whose membership includes many customers of trigger leads, officially isn’t a fan of them. Its president, Harry Dinham, laments many buyers of the alerts aren’t really in a position to make a firm offer of credit, as required by the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Even so, Dinham says a ban would be overkill. He’d prefer to see the leads sold only on consumers who elect to put their names on the trigger lists. As it stands now, leads about your interest in a mortgage can be sold unless you bother to opt out from all prescreened credit solicitations. That requires calling (888) 567-8688 or visiting www. optoutprescreen.com.

The credit agencies defend their sale of trigger leads by arguing it promotes competition, which keeps rates down. That stance has support at the Federal Trade Commission, which says consumers can benefit from the practice.

“It is absolutely false to say the first lender or broker that a consumer goes to is definitely going to have the best offer,” said Stuart Pratt, director of the Consumer Data Industry Association, the credit reporting agencies’ trade group.

Pratt insists credit agencies, led by the three largest — Experian, TransUnion and Equifax — check their trigger leads against anti-telemarketing do-not-call lists.

It’s unclear, however, how well that step works or is being followed. Ashley, for example, thinks she was already on the do-not-call list. Same with Matthew Tuttle, who runs a wealth-management firm in Stamford, Conn.

“I’m getting these calls five months after I refinanced,” Tuttle said. “Refinancing is a pain enough — I’m not doing it again, especially not for a recording.”

Mortgage triggers have been sold for at least a few years, but they have become more of an issue recently. Kiley at the Massachusetts Bankers Association thinks this is because the home-buying binge early in the decade caused an explosive growth of mortgage brokers and mortgage companies that now, in a cooling market, are redoubling efforts to win business.

Trigger leads also have cascaded because of a vast datacollecting infrastructure created by the credit bureaus and amplified by innumerable information brokers who serve as resellers. Such resellers offer to filter alerts for mortgage lenders by dozens of criteria, including consumers’ location, race, credit scores and home value.

The owner of one marketing service — who refused to be identified by name — said he has been selling mortgage triggers for almost two years. He said he presumes his product increases the chance a consumer will get an offer that keeps the mortgage banker honest.