Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act

Floor Speech

I rise in support of H.R. 2808, the Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act, and I commend Representatives Rose and Torres for introducing it. I thank the sponsors for their good work on this bipartisan bill, and I appreciate that the House is taking action to improve data privacy, in this case with respect to the mortgage market.

First, let's discuss, as I think the gentleman has, what a trigger lead is. You go to a particular lender or mortgage broker, and you apply for a mortgage. You want to deal with that mortgage broker or that financial institution. If you wanted to deal with others, you would go elsewhere. If you wanted to deal with several, you would call several.

When you seek a mortgage loan, of course the mortgage lender has to look at your credit report, so they call Equifax or whoever or email Equifax and get your credit report. Then the credit bureau sells that information--which you don't want divulged and which the lender doesn't want divulged--to other financial institutions without your permission, creating a so-called trigger lead. Then, as was pointed out, you become bombarded with phone calls, text messages, and other communications from rival mortgage loan officers. They may even give you misleading or deceptive information.

H.R. 2808 would curtail this abusive practice, limiting trigger lead notifications to a financial firm that a consumer already has a relationship with, like their current mortgage lender. If the consumer opts in, and you can opt in, then you can have everybody call you.

Now, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the good work of our former colleague Representative Lacy Clay who helped pave the path by first introducing a bill to curb abusive trigger leads clear back in 2020. Representative Clay's original bill didn't have any exceptions at all and simply required that a consumer opt in, and if the consumer chose not to opt in, their information could not be shared with other companies when they applied for a mortgage loan.

Consumer opt-in is an approach that data privacy advocates prefer and one that committee Democrats argued for last Congress when the committee considered former Chair McHenry's version of this bill.

We should put consumers first, put them in the driver's seat to control the use, sharing, and selling of their data. This bill gets us almost all the way there. It does provide exceptions for those financial institutions that you already have a relationship with.

We are not debating consumer privacy in a vacuum. It is unfortunate that Elon Musk and his DOGE minions have had access to data on hundreds of millions of Americans. I wish we were here on the floor preventing Mr. Musk from getting our personal health records, our consumer data, our business records, our Social Security numbers, and our tax data.

After we pass this bill, I hope that the Financial Services Committee would investigate what has happened to consumer protection and what has happened to data privacy, particularly with regard to data obtained from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Treasury Department.

Mr. Speaker, this bill is an important step toward protecting consumers from abuse, making sure that the fact that they applied for a mortgage with one mortgage company isn't sold against their will to every other mortgage company in the country.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I am prepared to close after hearing that the other side has no further speakers. I yield myself the balance of my time.

As I have discussed, H.R. 2808 is an important positive step to strengthen data privacy for consumers and curb the harmful practice of trigger leads, protecting consumers from entities that they didn't want to do business with, never sought to do business with, finding out that they are applying for a mortgage and then harassing them with a host of texts and calls, et cetera.

H.R. 2808 is supported by a wide range of groups, including the National Consumer Law Center, the National Association of Home Builders, the Independent Community Bankers of America, and America's Credit Unions. The Senate recently passed a nearly identical bill by unanimous consent.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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