For many Americans, the dream of homeownership is slipping out of reach.
Housing costs have risen far faster than incomes, and owning an average home now consumes close to half of what a typical household earns in a year.
Home prices remain elevated, monthly payments are straining family budgets, and policymakers are scrambling for solutions.
As leaders in Washington debate sweeping fixes like 50-year mortgages and other structural changes, it's critical that they don't undermine one of the quiet safeguards that already helps keep mortgage costs in check: the tri-merge credit report.
Tri-merge plays an essential role in mortgage lending by reducing the chance that incomplete or missing information will distort a borrower's score.
That accuracy matters because even small scoring errors can push borrowers into higher-priced loans, raising monthly payments and lifetime interest costs.
By preventing borrowers from being penalized simply because part of their financial history is missing from a single credit report, tri-merge helps ensure more precise pricing — and quietly keeps mortgage costs lower for American families.
Yet some special interests are now urging the Trump administration to revisit ideas floated during the Biden years.
Ideas which would weaken or abandon the tri-merge standard.
These ideas are often framed as a way to lower costs or streamline the mortgage process.
But in reality, they would introduce uncertainty and push creditworthy families further from homeownership.
To understand why, it helps to recognize how modern credit reporting actually works. Not all financial activity, known as tradelines, are reported uniformly across the three bureaus.
Rent payments, utilities, buy-now-pay-later accounts, fintech loans, and community-bank tradelines frequently appear on only one or two credit reports.
In a diverse and evolving economy, no single bureau can capture a borrower’s full financial history — good or bad.
Tri-merge helps correct for those gaps by ensuring lenders see the broadest possible view before making a high-stakes, long-term lending decision by reviewing credit data from all three nationwide bureaus before a loan is approved.
This can have a meaningful impact when buyers go to apply for a mortgage.
Multiple analyses have demonstrated that relying on fewer credit reports can impact a borrower’s score simply because certain tradelines disappear from view.
Research by S&P Global Ratings found that removing one credit report can shift a borrower’s score by as much as 45 points.
That kind of swing may look modest on paper, but in practice it can push a borrower into a higher pricing tier, translating into higher monthly payments and thousands of dollars in avoidable interest over the life of a loan.
In other cases, it can render otherwise qualified applicants ineligible altogether. For families already struggling in today’s housing market, adding another underwriting obstacle only compounds the challenge.
And when less credit data is available, that volatility doesn't just harm individual borrowers — it raises costs for everyone.
A recent analysis of loan-level data found that if underwriting becomes less reliable due to the repeal of the tri-merge requirement, investors will be forced to reprice risk upward across the market.
When they can't rely on a complete credit file, the entire mortgage pool looks riskier, and interest rates rise across the board.
Critics of the system point to cost, noting that a tri-merge credit check can run up to $100 per loan. But on a $250,000–$500,000 mortgage, that amounts to roughly 0.02-0.05% of the loan — less than the price of a single rate-lock extension and a rounding error inside closing costs that routinely approach $7,000.
In return, tri-merge helps ensure borrowers are placed in the correct pricing tier, which can result in significant interest cost savings over the life of a loan.
More importantly, alternative approaches are not free.
Single-bureau or bi-merge models still have associated costs and could introduce new expenses if incomplete data ultimately leads to delays or a loan falling through.
It is no surprise, then, that virtually every major housing-finance organization — including the American Bankers Association, Housing Policy Council, Independent Community Bankers of America, Structured Finance Association, and U.S. Mortgage Insurers — has urged FHFA to "indefinitely delay the option to utilize a bi-merge option for credit reporting."
Conservative lawmakers have also warned that eliminating tri-merge could "be the obstacle that keeps borrowers from obtaining a mortgage."
They're right. When nearly half of a family’s income is already consumed by the cost of homeownership, Washington would be wise not to introduce new volatility into the credit-underwriting process.
At a time when housing affordability is under significant strain, we must strengthen what works, not dismantle it.
The Trump administration should continue to ignore this renewed push from special interests and preserve the tri-merge standard.
Families deserve a mortgage system rooted in accuracy, stability, and common sense — especially now, when the cost of getting it wrong has never been higher.
George Landrith is the President of the Frontiers of Freedom Institute and the author of "Let Freedom Ring . . . Again: Can Self-Evident Truths Save America from Further Decline?" Read more George Landrith's Insider articles — Click Here Now.