Does the 3.6 data format help the one-person shop or bury it?

Question

I've been sitting in on vendor demos for the new UAD format, the one in broad production since January with mandatory use coming November 2 this year, and I can't work out which direction it cuts for small operators. Confirm the current dates and requirements with your form vendor and your state board, because both have been moving.

The case that it helps the solo appraiser: the report stops being a fixed page layout and becomes structured data, so the software does more of the assembly, and a person who knows their market well can produce a defensible file without a support staff. Cleaner data also makes it harder for a reviewer to bounce you for formatting.

The case that it buries the solo appraiser: every field that becomes structured is a field someone can audit. More discrete data points means more places to be inconsistent, and the shops with a review layer and a trainee doing data entry absorb that better than one person doing everything between inspections. Retraining time is unbilled either way.

I've heard both from people who actually sign reports, which is why I'm asking rather than guessing. Where do you land, and what specifically makes you land there?

jordan_ellis2 · Answer

The part I'd want measured before voting is unbilled hours during the changeover. If it's 30 hours of learning curve spread over a quarter, a solo shop eats that and moves on. If it's 30 hours a month for two quarters because every file kicks back, that's a different animal, and nobody I've read seems to know which it is yet.

diane_kowalski · Answer

beacon, the thing I notice from the land side is that structured data assumes the property fits the fields. I've been researching parcels where the meaningful facts are a shared well agreement and an access easement that isn't in any dataset. A narrative page could carry that. A dropdown can't, and I'd expect the small rural appraiser to spend more time in the addenda, not less. That's not a formatting problem, it's a problem with what the format believes a property is.

stephen_ok9 · Answer

I voted neutral. Whatever the format does, the number that decides whether a one-person shop survives is orders per month, and that's set by purchase volume and how many waivers the agencies hand out, neither of which cares about your workflow. arbor's easement point is real, though it argues for specialization rather than against the format. If the fields can't hold your parcels, the person who can write the addendum that holds them has less competition, not more.

Does the 3.6 data format help the one-person shop or bury it?

3 replies