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UAD 3.6: What the New Appraisal Report Means for Your Closings
The UAD 3.6 appraisal report lands November 2, and it changes shape for the first time in over fifteen years. Not how your house gets valued — how it gets written up. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are replacing the whole family of forms, including the redesigned URAR, with one report that flexes to the property. And it asks for specifics the old ones never did.
So we got an appraiser who has been doing this for forty years to walk agents through it.
Chris Aumente is a state-certified residential appraiser in Palm Beach County. He has had his own firm since 1995 and he has been appraising since 1987. He is also building his first sample reports on the new form right now, which is why the hour is worth your time. He is not describing it. He is doing it.
Prefer audio? Listen on Spotify · Watch on YouTube
Both handouts from the session:
The one-page readiness checklist · Chris’s full presentation, with the sample reports
The valuation isn’t changing. The paperwork is.
Chris said this four separate times on our call. I am repeating it because it is the part people get wrong.
UAD 3.6 is the Uniform Appraisal Dataset. Fannie and Freddie are mandating it for November 2. It does not change how an appraiser decides what your house is worth. It changes how they write it down.
Right now an appraiser can type a comment. After November 2 that comment becomes a field. “Updated,” “renovated” and “remodeled” go away entirely. His reason for that is the best argument for the whole project:
“Renovated to one person could be a new kitchen faucet and they painted. Renovated to another meant that they gutted the property and it was down to the studs. So be specific.”
Chris Aumente, state-certified residential appraiser, appraising since 1987
Instead of one condition grade for the whole house, components get rated on their own. Interior. Exterior. The pieces inside. And two categories of field exist now that never did before: disaster mitigation and green features. Hurricane straps. Shutters. Impact windows. Solar, and whether it is owned or leased.
The forms consolidate too. Today there is a single-family form, a condo form, a co-op form, a vacant land form. After November 2 there is one web-based report. Chris says it morphs like a transformer into whatever the property is. So “get me a 1073” stops being a sentence anybody says.
What the UAD 3.6 appraisal report costs you in time
This is the part I would put in front of your team.
| What changes | Today | After November 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Pages of analysis | About 6 | 14 to 22, depending on the property |
| Hours to write one report | 2 to 3 | 5 to 8, on Chris’s estimate |
| Closing you should be quoting | 30 days | 45 days |
More photos on site. More fields to fill. A longer report for an underwriter to read. Chris put the instruction plainly, and it is the most useful sentence in the hour:
“Instead of a 30-day closing, you might want to think maybe I should do a 45-day closing. Because lenders are gonna have a problem with the new form. Underwriters are gonna have a problem reading it. And the appraisers are gonna have a problem producing it.”
Chris Aumente
November 2 is forty-five days from today. Which is exactly the closing he is telling you to start writing.
On fees he is careful, and so am I. A residential appraisal runs about $500 today, and he sees the market anywhere from $350 to $550. What he hears appraisers discussing for the new report is $750 to $1,000. That is his read on the conversation inside his industry. It is not a quote and it is not our fee schedule.
The workforce is thin going in, too. The average American appraiser is 54 to 57 years old. He knows one who is dropping mortgage work and keeping estate files, and one who has decided to invest and adapt. He also sat in on a readiness call meant to cover appraisers in five states. About ten people showed up.
What a listing agent does about it
None of this is hard. It is just early, and almost nobody is doing it yet.
Fix the MLS listing. If it is a condo it says condo. If it is a manufactured home it says manufactured home. Property type mismatches are a real problem on the new report.
Stop writing “renovated.” Write new appliances, new flooring, new countertops, and roughly when.
Pull the permits and the certificates of occupancy before anybody asks for them.
Give the appraiser the four-point, not the home inspection. Chris was blunt here. The four-point already has the hurricane-strap photos, which saves him a trip into the attic. The home inspection tells him about the leaking pipe behind the wall he did not see and now has to report.
Bring the survey and the floor plan. Appraisers have had to measure to ANSI standards for a couple of years. A survey that matches the building as it stands today is genuinely useful. A survey showing 1,000 square feet on a house that is 4,000 square feet now is not.
Do not hide a defect. His words: he will not kill your deal over it, but your credibility is gone.
The one I would build a habit around is his last one. Call your past clients once a year. “Hey, I am updating our property records. When you put this back on the market, I want the most accurate information on it.”
Memories fade. The bathroom somebody thinks they did two years ago was eight years ago. The agent holding the accurate list is the one who deserves the listing.
Two things that surprised me
Chris was building a sample report on a condo he owns himself. He found out he had to go back and photograph the parking space. Then he went to report the unit’s air conditioning and discovered he does not have any — the building runs a central chilled-water tower, so there is no individual system to report.
That second one matters on our side. Whether a building runs central equipment is an insurance question we normally have to chase the association for. Now it shows up on the appraisal.
And one thing worth clearing up, because agents ask us constantly
You are allowed to give an appraiser information. You always were. What you cannot do is pressure them. The idea that Dodd-Frank means never speak to the appraiser was always a misreading of what it was for.
Same goes for your notes on a comp. An appraiser can use what you tell them about a property’s condition. They just have to verify it, which usually means picking up the phone and calling the agent who sold it.
One caveat, and then a question
This date could move. Big changes have been pushed before when the industry was not ready, and Chris is telling me his own software cannot import a sketch yet. We are preparing like November 2 holds, because that is the mandated date today. If it slips we will tell you.
So the question is the one I would ask about any listing you are taking this month. If the appraisal takes two weeks instead of one, does your contract survive it?
Send us the file and we will tell you honestly. (954) 271-2024 · cp-mtg.com
Capital Partners Mortgage Services, LLC · NMLS #2332376 · Craig Garcia, NMLS #653593 · 1515 N. University Dr., Suite D102, Coral Springs, FL 33071 · Equal Housing Opportunity · NMLS Consumer Access: www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org
Educational commentary only. Not legal, tax or appraisal advice, and not a commitment to lend. Page counts, timing and fee figures are as stated by our guest on September 17, 2026 and are his own observations; the November 2, 2026 implementation date is set by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and is subject to change. Chris Aumente is an independent appraiser and is not employed by or affiliated with Capital Partners Mortgage Services; his opinions are his own and are not endorsements by CPMS. Appraisers independently determine scope of work and the opinion of value, and CPMS does not direct or attempt to influence an appraiser’s value conclusion. All loans subject to credit, property, appraisal and program approval.
