I Applied for a Mortgage and Got Dozens of Phone Calls The Next Day. Here's Why (And How to Stop It)

Since I am in the market to buy a new house, I recently submitted an application for a mortgage loan. I'm also self-employed so I had to undergo a more detailed underwriting process in order to get pre-approved for my loan, including a hard credit check. This meant my mortgage lender pulled my credit report with the three major credit reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion), and I got an inquiry on my credit record.

The day after I applied for my mortgage loan, I received 42 phone calls from different mortgage lenders -- none of which were the ones I applied for the loan from. I received so many calls, I had to turn off my phone. And this has continued for days after I submitted my initial mortgage application, although the flood has turned into a trickle.

I didn't really understand why this happened -- but then I learned about event-based trigger programs. Here's what they are, and how you can stop this flurry of phone calls from happening to you if you apply for a home loan.

This is why I got so many mortgage phone calls

When certain types of triggering events happen, the credit bureaus who receive the inquiries will sell your information to mortgage lenders. All of these other lenders who buy this information are aware that you are in the market for a loan and you're serious about getting one soon since you submitted an application.

As a result, those lenders start calling you. And that's exactly what happened to me. I had dozens of different mortgage brokers and lenders calling me to try to convince me to get a loan with them.

I received an endless amount of both texts and phone calls, many of which came from lenders that made offers that seemed too good to be true. I didn't know who these lenders were, I hadn't vetted them, and this was nothing more than an annoyance to me because I had already shopped around among reputable lenders I trusted and had chosen the one I wanted to get my mortgage from.

I ended up just declining all the calls, but it was still really annoying to deal with them all day long.

How to stop getting these calls

The good news is, there is a way to stop this type of marketing from happening to you -- if you are aware of it. But it's helpful to take action in advance of when you apply for a mortgage loan.

If you don't want to receive phone calls or other offers from potential lenders you didn't reach out to, you can do something called opting out of prescreening. You can do this for either five years or permanently by going to www.optoutprescreen.com or calling 1-888-5-OPTOUT. You'll need to provide your personal information to opt out and will not get any prescreened offers from lenders you do not have a personal relationship with already.

It can take up to five days for your request to be processed, so you should take action before you submit your mortgage loan request. If you do, you'll save yourself the hassle I experienced after applying for my loan. If you don't like getting spam phone calls, filling out the form is well worth it.