After eight years of lobbying, the work was done. Then the 180 days of waiting began.
When Congress approved the Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act without opposition in August 2025, it was a major win for housing groups that had come together to restrict credit bureaus from selling consumer data without their permission.
The “trigger leads bill” was then signed into law by President Donald Trump on Sept. 5. It gave the agencies 180 days to comply with the new law. The waiting will come to an end on Thursday, when the rule goes into effect.
The National Association of Mortgage Brokers (NAMB) was an early proponent of the legislation to prevent credit reporting agencies from selling prospective homebuyers’ contact info to third-party mortgage brokers, lenders and other businesses following a credit check.
“To us, it’s eight years coming. We’re very, very excited that it’s going to protect the consumer, the mortgage broker, and better our industry,” NAMB President Kimber White told Scotsman Guide.
The group started pursuing congressional action on trigger leads, pushing for an all-out ban and working with lawmakers to get a bill introduced every year since 2018.
But it wasn’t until 2023 when the Broker Action Coalition (BAC) and the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) proposed the trigger leads curb that progress really began.
“For the first five years, NAMB was carrying that bucket of water by itself. And then everyone finally had their bills, and then MBA put together a coalition of organizations on trigger leads,” White recalled. “It wasn’t one group that came along and did trigger leads, boom, it’s done. It was a collaboration.”
Brendan McKay, chief advocacy officer for BAC, spent Tuesday morning on Capitol Hill, meeting with congressional staff who had helped with the legislation. The bill that passed in the House in June before heading to the Senate for approval was co-sponsored by U.S. representatives John Rose, R-Tenn., and Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y.
McKay joked with Scotsman Guide that it was a celebratory day, and he had been considering “maybe doing like a New Orleans-style funeral type of celebration for it.”
He did admit to being slightly pensive about the implementation, and that BAC had been communicating with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in hopes that it “will do some clarification on the rulemaking side of things, just on some minor technical details.”
“I hope that brokers see the work that we did and the implementation of this bill as evidence that we can get shit done,” McKay said. “And that change in D.C. is not out of their control, or out of our control.”
The MBA told Scotsman Guide that it is encouraging its members to give feedback post-enactment to ensure the law is working as intended.
