UAD 3.6 & the new URAR: what actually changed

For twenty years the form was the product: you filled the 1004 for a single-family home, the 1073 for a condo, the 1025 for 2–4 units, the 2090 for a co-op. UAD 3.6 throws all of that out. There is now one report — the URAR — and it reshapes itself around the assignment. The single-family SF1 sample renders to 23 pages; a desktop condo appraisal renders to a handful. Same form, different report.

The deeper change is what the report actually is. It's no longer a document with fields; it's a MISMO v3.6 data file with a document projected on top of it. The PDF you hand a borrower is a rendering — the thing that gets underwritten, scored, and audited is the XML.

The form used to forgive you. It doesn't anymore.

On the old forms, a slightly-off entry was a cosmetic issue a reviewer might let slide. Now every value maps to a defined data point with a defined type, a defined format, and a defined list of allowed values. Type an effective date as 09/20/2019 instead of 2019-09-20 and it's not a style nit — it's a format failure. Pick a condition rating that isn't one of C1–C6 and it's rejected outright. The report is machine-read first, human-read second, and the machine doesn't round up.

One file, many properties, each with a role

A UAD 3.6 report isn't just the subject — it's the subject and every property you analyzed, all in one file, each tagged with a ValuationUseType. The SF1 sample holds exactly one SubjectProperty, three SalesComparable properties, and five more marked PropertyAnalyzedNotUsed (considered, then set aside). The rules that apply to a field change with that tag, which is why "what changed" really means "you now have to think in roles."

Delivery is still UCDP — and it's stricter now

You still submit to the Uniform Collateral Data Portal. What's grown is the edit set behind it: the published UAD Compliance Rules run 728 checks — 592 that block the file (Fatal) and 136 that flag it (Warning) — covering completeness, format and type validity, and reasonableness. A rejected submission isn't a warning email; it's a full re-cycle through appraiser, reviewer, and portal. The whole point of checking beforehand is to make UCDP a formality.

The three habits that keep you clean

• Trust the XML, not the PDF — the PDF can look right while the data underneath is wrong.
• Ask "which role?" before you trust any field — subject and comparable rules diverge constantly.
• Validate before UCDP, not after — the portal will find these; better that you find them first.