Trigger leads are used by marketers in the mortgage industry for targeted advertising to people who are actively seeking a loan. Such leads are created when lending institutions check the credit records of people applying for mortgages, and usually result in promotional telephone calls to the borrower. Continue reading to learn more about the implications of trigger leads for the mortgage industry, along with details on how home buyers or refinancers can largely evade this type of promotion.

Some potential borrowers find it obnoxious to receive many telephone calls from different lenders and brokers after applying for a mortgage. There are a few options available for decreasing such calls. One is to sign up for the “Do Not Call” list at donotcall.gov; this stops most types of telemarketing after a month. Another option is to opt out of all “prescreened offers” (including not only mortgage trigger leads but pre-approved credit cards and various other promotions) at the web site optoutprescreen.com; this will also decrease the amount of “junk mail” you receive. The most thorough option is to purchase a Caller ID box and subscribe to this service, which might already be included in your regular monthly telephone bill.

As for their impact on the mortgage industry, trigger leads promote competition among lending institutions and increase the chance that a borrower might switch to a different lender than he or she initially applied for a mortgage from. A number of web sites offer to sell trigger leads, many of them providing options to filter the applicants by credit score, mortgage balance, location, and other borrower characteristics. This allows for the mortgage industry to better target promotion of mortgages catered to different types of people. Like most items, trigger leads are usually more expensive per unit when they are bought in smaller quantities. However, a larger staff may be necessary to utilize more trigger leads before they become outdated.

Basically, trigger leads are telephone numbers attached to mortgage application and credit report information, which can be filtered for particular criteria. Their highly targeted nature makes them much more desirable to the mortgage industry in comparison to random telemarketing, but such calls are still more likely to meet rejection than more voluntary forms of promotion. Borrowers who desire to avoid having their phone numbers sold as trigger leads should take one or more of the above-mentioned precautions before applying for mortgages.