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Flooded With Change: Appraisers Tackle a Dynamic URAR and UAD 3.6

by Isaac Peck, Publisher

UAD 3.6 and the redesigned Uniform Residential Appraisal Report (URAR) have officially arrived, marking a major shift in how residential appraisals are completed and delivered. Replacing the legacy forms with a single dynamic report, the new URAR adapts to each property type and assignment, while UAD 3.6 introduces a more structured, data-driven format.

Together, they aim to streamline reporting, improve consistency, and lay the groundwork for greater transparency across the mortgage industry. Appraisers, lenders, and software providers are now navigating the rollout, preparing for full adoption by late 2026.

For the appraisal profession, this is one of the most significant shifts in decades. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have begun rolling out the redesign after nearly a decade of development. Its Limited Production Period started on September 8, 2025, allowing appraisers to use either the older UAD 2.6 or the new UAD 3.6 format. This dual system window gives everyone a chance to familiarize themselves with the changes without being forced to switch overnight.

Lenders and appraisal management companies have until November 2, 2026, to fully implement UAD 3.6. While this phased approach creates breathing room for system updates and staff training, it also introduces a period of mixed requirements that could be confusing for both appraisers and lenders.

Software vendors and large lenders are racing to update their platforms, with some taking a “first mover” stance on UAD 3.6. Smaller lenders tend to sit back and watch how early adopters navigate the inevitable hiccups. As a result, appraisers may face varying expectations depending on which lender or AMC they’re working with during the transition.

The scope of these changes is so broad that both GSEs partnered with leading education providers on a seven-hour continuing education course. They recognize that appraisers need thorough, standardized training to master the new data fields, digital workflows, and report structures.

This article will highlight the most consequential developments in UAD 3.6 and the redesigned URAR, share insights from industry leaders, and outline the key areas appraisers should monitor over the next 18 months.

Here’s what we know so far, and what it means for practicing appraisers.

The Dynamic URAR Everyone’s Talking About
One of the most notable features of the redesigned URAR is its dynamic, adaptive format. As appraisers enter data, the form expands or contracts to match the property and assignment, replacing legacy forms like 1004, 2055, and 1073 with a single, responsive report.

This change isn’t limited to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The VA and FHA helped develop the new dataset and are expected to adopt UAD 3.6 and the URAR, though their rollout timelines are still unclear. Once the new format becomes standard for government-backed loans, private lenders are likely to follow. Within 12 to 18 months, it’s expected that over 95 percent of residential mortgage appraisals will use this updated report, marking one of the most widespread shifts in appraisal documentation in decades.

In August 2025, Working RE attended Valuation Expo, hosted by Appraiser eLearning. As the largest gathering of appraisers, vendors, and valuation professionals in the country, this year’s event was among the biggest in recent history. The hottest topic of conversation there? UAD 3.6 and the new URAR.

Nearly half the conference presentations centered on the redesigned report format. Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sent senior valuation leaders to speak directly with appraisers and lenders about the transition. In the expo hall, a wave of new vendors showcased their solutions, including several startup appraisal software providers, some led by entrepreneurs in their 20s and 30s eager to bring fresh technology to the profession.

A few vendors made bold claims that their platforms could complete an appraisal in just two to three minutes using artificial intelligence to scan the house on the inspection walkthrough. The rooms hummed with a combination of excitement and skepticism towards this new era of appraisal reporting and the technological solutions that are being put forth to assist appraisers.

Val Expo hosted a number of town hall style discussions with valuation leaders from both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as several lenders and technology providers, to help share the perspectives behind this change.

The transformation isn’t just about updating a form. It’s about rethinking how appraisers tell the story of a property. Lyle Radke, Senior Director of Collateral Policy at Fannie Mae, recalls that serious conversations about redesigning the Uniform Residential Appraisal Report (URAR) began as early as 2013. “Everything in the old URAR was designed around a piece of paper,” he explains. “We just took what we had and digitized it. But that is not how society works anymore.”

The redesigned URAR, part of the UAD 3.6 rollout, shifts the focus from static forms to dynamic, data-driven reporting. Instead of cramming commentary into unstructured addenda, appraisers now select from defined data elements, structured fields that expand or contract based on the property and assignment. “We’ve defined these data elements with specific enumerations,” Radke says. “Appraisers can be very efficient and very fast at this. You can’t do that on paper.”

Scott Reuter, Chief Appraiser at Freddie Mac, echoes that sentiment. “We’re making a significant change to the whole ecosystem,” he says. “We’re not just updating a form … we’re providing a data set.” While narrative commentary still has a place, the new format prioritizes clarity and consistency through structured inputs. Reuter notes that this shift will reduce revision requests and save time for both lenders and appraisers. “Appraisers do a great job telling the story, but if you put those explanations into the unstructured addendum, it’s hard to find,” he explains. “Lenders get frustrated trying to locate specific commentary, and appraisers get frustrated when they’re asked to clarify something they already included.”

Technology plays a key role in making this transition smoother. Both Radke and Reuter emphasize the value of mobile tools for collecting data during inspections. “Working in an app when you’re at the property is the way you’re going to want to work,” Radke advises. Reuter adds, “If I ever got back in the field, I’d find someone half my age and learn technology. It’s really going to facilitate the new report.”

Ultimately, the goal is for higher appraisal quality and consistency across the industry. “By capturing discrete data analytics, we’re clearly signaling to the world what the standard is,” Reuter says. Radke agrees, noting that Fannie Mae tracks internal quality metrics like defect rates and overvaluation risk, and expects those numbers to improve. “If we can drive those numbers down through appraisal quality, that’s good for the lender and that’s good for us,” he says. This is both a technical upgrade and a cultural shift in how appraisers communicate value.

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A Challenging Transition
Despite the optimism, both GSE leaders acknowledged that the transition will not be without challenges. Reuter described the process as “having a steep learning curve,” even for those who are enthusiastic about the change. “End-to-end across the process, you’re learning something new,” he said. “The goal is to become much more efficient as time goes on, but in the short term, you’ll need to double back on technology and entertain new tools to help you along the way.”

Radke added that appraisers should be thoughtful about how they integrate new technologies into their workflow. “If you try to adopt everything all at once, it’s going to make the learning curve harder. We should be asking ourselves: Am I using the right tech? How do I measure homes? Those are the kinds of questions appraisers need to consider as they transition.”

Perhaps the most profound change lies in how the new dataset reshapes traditional areas of appraisal practice, especially market analysis and adjustments. Both Radke and Reuter agreed that while many appraisers excel at comp selection, the bigger challenges often lie in adjustment support and neighborhood analysis. “We see several problems with appraisals,” Radke noted. “Not every appraisal, but we think everyone is pretty well-versed on the comp selection problem. The bigger problem with valuation support is your adjustment rates: where did that adjustment rate come from? Why did you decide to adjust for that particular amount?”

He warned that appraisers who “cut corners” in their development process will be more exposed under UAD 3.6, while those who rigorously support their adjustments will benefit.

Reuter added that the redesigned URAR transitions the “Neighborhood” section into a broader “Market Analysis,” putting greater emphasis on how appraisers interpret market trends and apply them in support of their conclusions. “If you’re weak on how you develop your adjustment rates, you can go take a class. Find better techniques that will make you better prepared when 3.6 comes into play,” Reuter advised.

GSE leaders understand that the new UAD framework represents a shift toward a more digital, data-driven future for appraisers. Ken DeFeo of Freddie Mac reminded the industry that change is constant. “Twenty years ago, AVMs were going to put us out of business, yet here we are,” he said. “If we didn’t think this dataset was going to live on and keep moving forward, we wouldn’t have spent eight years building it.”

Sean Pensiero of Fannie Mae highlighted the technical backbone of the redesign: JSON-readable, APIcompliant, and built for seamless integration. “That means fewer revision requests and greater transparency, because both humans and machines can read and validate the appraisal,” he explained. DeFeo added that this structure boosts credibility across the board. With the GSEs laying the groundwork, the next challenge is whether lenders will adapt quickly enough to keep pace with the new system.

Lender Perspective
One of the quieter, but important, shifts in UAD 3.6 is how lenders will order appraisals. Under the old system, form numbers acted as shorthand: lenders could tell if a property was a condo, single-family home, or manufactured housing simply by the form type. That shorthand also helped determine scope of work and fee schedules, with pricing often tied to the complexity implied by the form.

Currently, lenders rely heavily on manual review and commentary buried in addenda to understand the nuances of an appraisal. If something’s unclear, they request revisions (sometimes multiple rounds) which slow down the process and frustrate both sides. “Clicks cost us money,” said Jessica Jenkins Tomé of Freedom Mortgage. “Revisions cost us money. This new format allows us to reduce that quite a bit. Less revisions, more targeted revisions.”

With UAD 3.6, lenders must now explicitly define property type and scope of work when ordering an appraisal. That shift will require clearer communication upfront, but it also unlocks more structured data on the back end. Instead of hunting through narrative sections, lenders will be able to validate key details through discrete fields, reducing ambiguity and speeding up review time.

Jenkins Tomé added that the benefits extend to borrowers: “Our customers really want speed and accuracy. Less repurchase demands, less revisions, and reduced cost.” While the rollout may cause short-term friction, she believes early adoption will ease the transition. “If I refuse to adapt, it’s going to take longer. Maybe it’s a good idea that folks participate ahead of time.”

As lenders rethink how they order and review appraisals, software developers are also reimagining the tools appraisers will use to complete them, ushering in a more transparent, efficient ecosystem for everyone involved.

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Software Views
For software developers, the new URAR represents a fundamental shift in how appraisal reports are built, delivered, and experienced. “The 3.6 Report is a completely different approach,” says Matt Krodel, Principal of Product Management at a la mode. “It’s not a static form anymore. If something doesn’t apply, it won’t even show up.” That dynamic structure required a full rethink of how the report behaves, as well as the ability to know what other developers navigating the same terrain will need.

From a practical standpoint, Krodel says the valuation process itself won’t change, but the way appraisers input and structure their data will. “The analysis is the same. The information is the same. What’s going to be different is that more of that data now has a specific place that it needs to go. In the past, appraisers included all the extra details in an addendum after the main form, each appraiser with their own arrangement of the information in whatever way they saw fit. One of the challenges will be getting used to where the data goes—what section, where the photos go,” he notes. This restructuring also creates opportunities for software to guide appraisers more naturally through the workflow, easing the learning curve.

Jeff Bradford, founder and CEO of Bradford Technologies, says that his firm chose to look at the new URAR as an opportunity. “We saw that the GSEs were blowing up the world. They were creating a unique inflection point where every software vendor had to build new software,” he said. “We asked ourselves: We are a forms provider, do we keep building form-filling tools, or do we use our technology to do more and truly improve the appraisal experience? We chose the latter. Instead of just building new form filling software which is used at the end of the appraisal process, we decided to apply next generation technology to the appraisal process. Our goal is to improve the appraisal process by making it more efficient, more supportable and eliminating as many time-consuming tasks as possible. One of those tedious tasks is form-filling to create the report. In our system, the report is automatically generated.”

The way appraisers enter and organize data is evolving fast. Bradford adds, “With UAD 3.6, you go out to the property and you’re collecting everything— not just what contributes to value.” This restructuring opens the door for smarter, more intuitive software. “We said we’re either going to sink or swim. The road we picked was difficult, but we came out the other side with a product that set the foundation for the future. There is so much information available; artificial intelligence will play a role; mobile apps with LiDAR scanning will become the norm. What we are seeing today is the tip of the iceberg. We are entering a new era of appraisal software. So much data needs to be collected in the field, so you definitely need a mobile solution. Software that not only helps produce the report, but assists the appraiser in performing the appraisal. I think it’s an exciting time to be an appraiser,” Bradford says.

With the limited production date in September, all the software providers are racing to prepare, but rumor has it that very few are currently ready, and the majority of the leading software vendors plan to be equipped by November or December 2025.

Liability Considerations
Another concern among appraisers is whether the expanded detail and data fields in the new URAR could expose them to greater liability. Brianna Walker, Senior Underwriter at OREP Insurance, shares many of the questions she hears stem from buyer-initiated demands and lawsuits. “Case law in much of the country is friendly to appraisers when it comes to buyer-initiated suits. In a standard mortgage appraisal, the buyer isn’t the client and generally has no private right of action against the appraiser. They’re a third party. That doesn’t stop buyers from filing claims, though—we regularly see litigation that alleges the appraiser failed to identify property defects. It’s essentially the ‘you did a bad home inspection’ type of complaint,” Walker explains.

Will UAD 3.6 increase those types of claims? Possibly, Walker cautions. “With more fields and more data points—roof condition and age, appliance functionality, and so on—there are simply more details for buyers to latch onto when something goes wrong. We may see a slight uptick in complaints or demands as homeowners look for someone to blame. But we don’t expect a significant change in overall exposure or claim counts. Still, we’ll be monitoring it closely and will likely recommend additional disclaimers and disclosures for OREP Members to include in their reports,” Walker says.

Advice for Appraisers
To wrap things up, Working RE talked to Hal Humphreys, partner at Appraiser eLearning and a seasoned instructor, to get his take on how appraisers are responding to UAD 3.6 and the redesigned URAR. Humphreys has taught the GSEs’ new course nationwide and says he’s seen plenty of fear—but also a shift once appraisers dug in.

“When I start every class, I ask how many plan to retire once the new URAR is mandatory. Anywhere from 15 to 50 percent raise their hands,” he says. “By the end of the class, usually nobody does. Or maybe a couple but they were going to retire anyway. Once folks start digging into it, I think it’s very doable.”

Humphreys’ advice? Take the class and start using mobile tech. “Don’t try to take notes. Just listen. And if you’re not using a mobile process now, start today. It’s not mandatory, but it’s highly recommended. Mobile inspection apps are the perfect checklist. Without them, you’ll forget things and spend way more time later.”

While the new data fields may make inspections longer at first, Humphreys believes that comfort with mobile tools will help appraisers maintain efficiency. “Once you’re back at the office, you’re not transcribing notes or doing a sketch; it’s already done. You can focus on market analysis and adjustments.”

For appraisers, the next 12 months represent both a challenge and an opportunity. The new URAR marks one of the most significant changes in residential appraisal in decades, and while there is definitely a consensus as to its long-term benefits, the adjustment won’t be effortless.

As Hal Humphreys emphasizes, the learning curve is real, and the shift in workflow and data collection can feel overwhelming at first.

Appraisers can move through whatever discomfort they might find, and evolve with the profession, and you don’t need to do it alone. Starting early will leave you better equipped to navigate the transition and help shape how the new standards take root across the profession.

About the Author
Isaac Peck is the Publisher of Working RE magazine and the President of OREP Insurance, a leading provider of E&O insurance for real estate professionals. OREP serves over 10,000 appraisers with comprehensive E&O coverage, competitive rates, and 14 hours of CE at no charge for OREP Members (CE not approved in IL, AK, GA). Visit OREP.org to learn more. Reach Isaac at isaac@orep.org or (888) 347-5273. CA License #4116465.

OREP Insurance Services, LLC. Calif. License #0K99465