Hi, I’m Adam DeSanctis, this is the Mortgage Minute, the latest news from the Mortgage Bankers Association. After two years of unrelenting advocacy efforts, MBA is now more optimistic than ever that the abusive use of mortgage credit trigger leads is close to an end. That’s because last week, the full US House of Representatives passed a slightly amended version of the Home Buyer’s Privacy Protection Act by voice vote. The highly anticipated vote comes less than two weeks after the Senate passed a companion measure by unanimous consent. MBA thanks nearly 2,000 Mortgage Action Alliance members who participated in the call to action by asking the representative to vote in favor of the bill six months after enactment. This legislation would eliminate the abusive use of mortgage credit trigger leads while preserving their deployment in appropriately limited circumstances. Under this bill trigger leads would be permissible under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Only in limited circumstances during a real estate transaction and only to provide a firm offer of credit. So what’s next? the Senate and House will need to reconcile the minor differences between the two bills. The House Pass Bill contains language for a government accountability office study on the value of trigger leads by text message. The Senate pass bill does not. MBA will continue to work with the bill sponsors and congressional leadership in both chambers to get a uniform bill passed and signed into law as quickly as possible. That’s it for this week. Thank you for listening.
Adam DeSanctis, Director of Public Affairs at Mortgage Bankers Association
As a strategic public affairs and communications executive with nearly two decades of experience, Adam has deep expertise in strategy, management, and media relations. He is widely considered to be an expert in a variety of communications, including advocacy, brand, executive, crisis, grassroots, and social media. In his career, he has been the MBA spokesperson on a wide variety of real estate research and advocacy-related issues, promoted MBA research and advocacy efforts to financial, political, and trade industry media and on MBA’s social media channels, and secured media opportunities for MBA leadership on key real estate trends and issues, generated media coverage for MBA’s research and data on mortgage applications, credit availability, homebuilder applications, mortgage forbearance/delinquencies, commercial real estate originations, and forecasts, and other industry analysis, developed key strategic initiatives for MBA’s organizational public affairs plan, media relations and member communications support for mPower, MBA’s Opens Doors Foundation and MBA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs.