The UAD 3.6 Problem Nobody's Talking About

Hundreds of pages of GSE specs. Implementation guides. XML schemas. The kind of stuff that makes you question your career choices.

We read it all.

What surprised us the most: the most important thing to get right first, is the order form.

In hindsight it makes sense. Good data in, good data out. Start with good data, and the downstream dead ends disappear. The revision loops. The fee disputes. Etc. All of it traces back to data that should've been captured upfront. Get the order form right, and those problems stop happening.

We covered the big picture of UAD 3.6 in our last article. Today: the first thing you actually need to fix.

Pull up your current order form. What does it ask for?

If you're like most lenders and AMCs, it's something like:

That worked fine under the old system. You picked a form number, the appraiser knew roughly what to do, everyone moved on.

But when accepting an order, the onus was on the appraiser to get/find the property details.

UAD 3.6 doesn't work that way.

Remember the 6 questions from our last article? Valuation method, construction type, site ownership, project type, unit count, ADUs. Your order form needs to capture all of these before you can determine the right product and get an accurate price. Most order forms we've seen don't collect half of this information.

If you don't have it upfront, someone's chasing it later. And "later" is always more expensive than "now."

Although UAD 3.6 seems like busy compliance work, it’s actually going to improve our long term process and data structures across the industry.

Here's the reality: under UAD 3.6, the appraisal report configures itself based on property characteristics. Is it a manufactured home? The Manufactured Home section appears. Is it a condo? Project Information section appears, etc etc.

That means appraisers need to know these details before they accept an order, not when they pull up to the property.

Under the old system, an appraiser could accept an order that said "1004, 123 Main Street" and figure out the rest during inspection. Manufactured home? They'd discover that on-site.

That approach creates problems we’ve been living with. If the appraiser doesn't know it's a manufactured home until they're standing in front of it, they've potentially accepted the wrong scope, quoted the wrong fee, and blocked out the wrong amount of time.

Appraisers who've been burned by incomplete orders start declining anything that looks sketchy. Your acceptance rates drop. Turn times stretch. Everyone's frustrated.

The fix isn't asking appraisers to be more flexible. The fix is capturing accurate property characteristics at intake, so appraisers know exactly what they're signing up for before they accept. But that means more work up front for Lenders and AMCs.

Here's what happens when your order form doesn't capture enough information.

Scenario 1: The Revision Loop

You submit an order for what you think is a standard single-family home. The form said "1004" and gave an address.

The appraiser accepts, drives to the property, and discovers it's actually part of a condo project. That's not a standard Traditional appraisal; it needs the Project Information section enabled, plus HOA data, project type classification, and potentially a condo addendum.

Now you're in revision territory. The appraiser needs to update the order, potentially renegotiate the fee, and gather information they weren't expecting to collect. You're explaining to your client why the appraisal is taking longer than expected.

Scenario 2: The Compliance Rejection

Worse: the order goes through with wrong property characteristics. The appraiser completes the report based on what they were told. But the property has an ADU that nobody mentioned at intake, and the report doesn't include the required ADU sections.

You submit to UCDP. It kicks back because the data doesn't match what the GSEs expect for a property with an accessory dwelling unit.

Now you're scrambling to fix a compliance issue on a loan that might have a rate lock expiring.

Both scenarios are avoidable. The common thread: the order form didn't collect the right information upfront.

When you get the data right upfront, a lot of problems just disappear.

Think about how much time your team spends on corrections. Revision requests. Fee disputes. Chasing information that should've been collected at intake. Orders bouncing between appraisers because the scope wasn't clear.

That's not "the appraisal business." That's the cost of bad data at intake.

When your order form captures accurate property characteristics from the start:

UAD 3.6 is forcing a change that, honestly, the industry probably should have made years ago. Better data at intake isn't just a compliance requirement; it's how you run a tighter operation.

Here's what makes this harder than it sounds: people have been ordering appraisals by form number for decades.

"I need a 1004" is muscle memory. It's how loan officers learned the business. It's what your LOS dropdown says. It's embedded in your pricing sheets, your turn time expectations, your training materials.

UAD 3.6 asks you to think differently. Instead of "I need a 1004," you need to think "I need to describe this property accurately so the system can determine the right product."

That's a real shift. It requires everyone involved in the order process, from loan officers to processors to order desk staff, to understand what property characteristics matter and why.

If your form still has a dropdown that says "Select Form: 1004 / 1073 / 2055..." people will keep thinking in form numbers. They'll pick what they've always picked and hope for the best.

If your form asks "What type of property is this?" and "Is it in a condo or co-op project?" and "How many units does it have?", people learn the new model by using it. The form teaches the workflow.

And honestly? Once people get used to it, they tend to prefer it. Describing the property is more intuitive than memorizing which form number applies to a 2-unit condo with an ADU.

Here's what we learned building our order form from scratch for UAD 3.6.

A good order form:

We learned that last one the hard way.

The transition takes effort. But this isn't just about checking a compliance box; it's about building a better process.

Get the order form right, and UAD 3.6 becomes manageable. Get it wrong, and you're fighting the same fires for the next nine months.

Once you're through it, you're running a cleaner operation. That's the real win.

Next up: Your product list needs to change too, and no, you can't just rename your forms. We'll break down why the "base + modifier" structure works and what happens if you try to force the old approach into the new system.

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