MISMO issues appraisal spec updates to support UAD 3.6

The leading mortgage industry procedural standards organization provided an update to appraisal specifications, aligning them to a change in reporting rules governing data delivery that become mandatory this year. 

The Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization made changes to its Property and Valuation Services procurement dataset specification this week in a move that will support lender efforts to gain compliance with the Uniform Appraisal Dataset rule, UAD 3.6 established by the government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

"The specification provides for recommendations that support the new UAD 3.6 style of valuation services and includes the GSE recommended elements for ordering without form numbers," said Elizabeth Green, a senior vice president at ServiceLink. Green also chairs MISMO's PaVS community of practice working group.

The MISMO update will also provide business participants coordinated guidance when ordering appraisal services, she added.

"The Property and Valuation Services Procurement specification provides a standardized approach to requesting services using the MISMO vocabulary. This enables trading partners to more quickly develop and deploy integrations to transact services without getting bogged down in proprietary approaches." 

The PaVS group created the new specifications in response to industry demand for data standardization in valuation-service transactions, MISMO said. The update should primarily benefit enterprise technology units responsible for integrating orders between lenders, appraisal management companies and valuation providers. 

The changes currently hold candidate-recommendation status, denoting they underwent thorough review and achieved industry consensus. 

The UAD 3.6 timeline

The GSEs announced implementation requirements for UAD 3.6 in late 2024, introducing a timeline for adoption in order to make loans eligible for conforming secondary market sales. Officials at the Federal Housing Administration, the guarantor of government-backed loans, followed suit last summer in announcing it would also accept UAD 3.6 reporting. 

Following a limited production phase in late 2025, optional implementation of UAD 3.6 for all industry participants started in January. The new reporting forms and format become mandatory at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on November 2. 

In May, the GSEs issued additional guidance to clarify the deadline applied to the date appraisals are entered into their Uniform Collateral Data Portal, rather than when loans are submitted to the enterprises, removing confusion surrounding required compliance.

At the beginning of the optional adoption stage in January, appraisal industry leaders, including Green, warned that many lenders were still not fully ready for the UAD 3.6 changes. As the November deadline approaches, though, a heightened sense of urgency is leading mortgage industry partners to accelerate adoption, they said.