Mortgage Lending: Newly Enacted Restrictions May Help Curb Unwanted Solicitations While Preserving Comparison Shopping

What GAO Found When homebuyers apply for a mortgage, lenders request their credit reports from credit reporting agencies. These agencies may then sell the homebuyers’ contact and credit information to other lenders and brokers, which use it to send competing loan offers. Before recent legislation, credit reporting agencies could, without the homebuyer’s consent, provide this information to those that did not have an existing relationship with the homebuyer (see figure).