Opt Out of Uninvited Mortgage Offers

Picture this: You apply for a loan from a local mortgage company on a Monday afternoon. By Tuesday morning, you're getting unsolicited phone pitches from out-of-state lenders who seem to know a lot about your personal finances:

· Your credit scores.

· Your outstanding credit card balances and other revolving credit accounts.

· The approximate market value of your home and how much you owe on it.

· Your home address and obviously, your phone number.

Thousands of loan applicants around the country are receiving uninvited pitches such as these, sometimes just 12 hours after getting a mortgage quote. But now a major mortgage industry group is planning a campaign to put a damper on the practice.

"There are very serious privacy, identity-theft and bait-and-switch issues involved here," said Roy DeLoach, executive vice president of the 27,000-member National Association of Mortgage Brokers. "It's outrageous that simply applying for a home loan should open up a person's sensitive personal information."

The practice targeted by the mortgage brokers is known in the industry as "trigger list" marketing -- a warp-speed version of the "pre-screened" credit card offers you get routinely. It works this way: When your local mortgage company checks your credit to provide you a rate quote, one or more of the national credit bureaus take that inquiry and essentially turn it into a marketing product.

So-called "lead generator" companies and some lenders themselves are eager to know the identities of people who are in the process of shopping for a mortgage -- and they pay the credit bureaus for those hot prospects.

Generally the prospects have to fit credit and geographic profiles that the lenders have set in advance. For example, one customer might want only the identities and contact information of people in the Los Angeles area with FICO credit scores above 700 who have applied or inquired about a jumbo home mortgage within the past 24 hours.

Another might want only the credit and contact information of Washington or Chicago residents who applied for a zero-down-payment loan no more than 12 hours ago. The fresher the information, the better, marketers say.

The credit bureaus defend their right to sell applicants' personal financial information, arguing that it is simply a zippier form of marketing pre-screened target prospect lists for credit offers -- something they have been doing for years.