A Guide to Appraising Atypical Properties with the New UAD 3.6 and URAR

As an appraiser, I've lost count of the number of times I've felt like I was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. You know the feeling: you're looking at a site condominium, a property with two accessory dwelling units (ADUs), or a manufactured home in a co-op, and you're stuck trying to decide which legacy form is the "least wrong" choice. That process often meant lengthy addenda to explain why the form didn't quite fit the property.

I'm Daniel Yoder, and throughout my career, I've seen how these atypical properties can complicate our workflow. The good news is that this long-standing frustration is one of the key problems being addressed by the upcoming Uniform Appraisal Dataset (UAD) 3.6 and the redesigned Uniform Residential Appraisal Report (URAR). The new system is built to handle complexity, shifting our focus from rigid forms to the specific, factual characteristics of the property itself.

Let's break down how this new data-driven approach will finally give us the tools to accurately report on these challenging assignments.

Moving Beyond the Form: A Data-First Approach

The most fundamental change we're facing is the retirement of the familiar form numbers we've used for decades. Instead of selecting a form like a 1004 or 1073, the new URAR will be dynamically generated based on a specific set of data points that describe the property. For those who want a deeper dive into which data points are replacing the forms, you can review a detailed breakdown here: [The End of Form Numbers: How 6 Data Points Are Redefining Appraisals](https://www.valuemate.ai/blog/the-end-of-form-numbers-how-6-data-points-are-redefining-appraisals).

This shift is more than just a change in semantics; it's the very foundation that allows the new URAR to be flexible. It means we're no longer limited by predefined boxes. Instead, we provide the discrete data, and the report assembles itself to reflect the property's unique reality.

A New Framework for Atypical Properties

The "Functioning without Form Numbers" guide published by the GSEs gives us a clear look at how this will work in practice for properties that never fit neatly on a legacy form.

Site Condominiums (Detached Condos)

This has always been a classic headache. Is it a condo or a single-family home? The answer is both, and the old forms couldn't handle that nuance. With the new UAD 3.6, we can now accurately represent a site condo by combining specific data points:

* Project Legal Structure: Condominium * Construction Method: Site Built * Attachment Type: Detached * Subject Site Owned in Common: No

This combination of data points was impossible to convey on a single legacy form but now perfectly describes the property's legal and physical nature, eliminating the need for extensive clarification in an addendum.

Complex Manufactured Homes

The new URAR also provides clarity for various manufactured housing scenarios that were previously difficult to report. For example, we can now clearly define:

* A manufactured home in a cooperative: By selecting Construction Method: Manufactured and Project Legal Structure: Cooperative. * A manufactured home with more than one living unit: By using the Units Excluding ADUs data point to specify a number greater than one.

These combinations give us the flexibility to report on the growing variety of manufactured home types we see in the market.

Properties with More Than One ADU With zoning changes sweeping the country, properties with multiple ADUs are becoming more common. Legacy forms had no clean way to account for this. The new URAR directly addresses this with the AccessoryDwellingUnitTotalCount data point. We can now simply enter