The Alignment Series™ · Free Live Session
Two Appraisal Standards, One Divorce File:
What Changes on November 2, 2026
On November 2, 2026, the appraisal your client's lender orders changes completely. The appraisal ordered for the divorce does not change at all. This session is about the gap that opens between them, and what it does to a settlement written before anyone noticed.
Free to attend
What this session covers
The divorce appraisal does not change on November 2. The lender's does.
In 60 minutes, we walk the two documents side by side: the general purpose report your client's appraiser writes for the case, and the modernized report the lender submits under the new Uniform Appraisal Dataset. They were never the same document. From November 2 they are not even close.
- What the November 2, 2026 mandate actually binds: conventional loans sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, and nothing else. FHA has not adopted it, and there is no mandatory date.
- Why the mandate keys to the submission date rather than the order date, and the October pipeline trap that follows from it
- Why the report written for the divorce is untouched by any of this, and why that is the part that matters in your file
- The six places the two reports now diverge: definition of value, effective date, condition, how many values each one carries, deferred maintenance, and market analysis
- Why the lender's report will often be the more detailed condition document in the file, which is the opposite of what most people assume
- How to write the basis of value into the agreement in its own words, when the report for the case returns a single number
- Which cross examination questions stop working, because the fields they aim at will no longer exist on the form
The file that makes it concrete. Agreement signed in September. Buyout refinance, funding mid November. The appraisal is ordered October 20, the property inspected the 24th, the report delivered the 28th, and the lender submits it November 3.
Not Successful. Nothing went wrong in that file. The date the report was submitted was simply on the wrong side of the mandate, and the refinance the settlement depends on starts over.
This session addresses the lending and settlement planning side of the change. It does not instruct appraisers on scope of work or form selection, which are the appraiser's determination, and it is not legal advice.
What changes on the lender's side
Four changes that land directly in a contested marital home.
Thirteen legacy forms retire and one modernized report replaces them, running 18 to 30 pages on legal size paper. Most of the change is lender operations. These four are not.
A structured, costed defect list
Six tables of apparent defects, damages and deficiencies, each item recorded with its location, whether it affects soundness or structural integrity, and a recommended action, then repeated on page one with an estimated cost to repair. Kitchens and baths are rated individually, with photographs.
More than one number in one report
Client requested conditions and alternate opinions of value mean a single lender report can carry several figures, and the overall condition rating is now hypothetical, as if required repairs had been completed. The report written for the case still returns one number.
The neighborhood section dissolves
The 1004MC is gone, replaced by roughly twenty discrete market fields, a required market area boundary description, and a lookback period the appraiser selects. Gross living area is gone as well, replaced by six area buckets.
The report names who inspected the property
Role, name, company and occupation of the data collector, from a list that includes real estate agent, plus whether the interior and exterior inspection was physical, virtual, or not performed at all. The dataset behind the PDF holds more than the PDF displays.
Who this is for
Built for the professionals divorce housing decisions depend on.
If a marital home is being kept, bought out, or refinanced under an agreement signed this fall, this change reaches your file whether or not anyone in the room orders an appraisal.
Family Law Attorneys
Mediators
Financial Professionals
Judicial Officers
The research behind the session
The Divorce Appraisal Report: What Changes November 2, 2026
The session is built on the Divorce Lending Association's published report, researched against primary Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, HUD and Appraisal Foundation sources. Read it before the session if you want the full detail, or attend and take the working version.
Your presenter
Jody Bruns, CDLP®
Founder & President, Divorce Lending Association
Jody Bruns founded the Divorce Lending Association in 2011 and established Divorce Mortgage Planning as a defined professional discipline. She created the Certified Divorce Lending Professional (CDLP®) designation and the Real Estate Mediation Specialist (REM-S™) certification, and brings more than 35 years in mortgage and finance to the work.
Under her leadership, DLA has trained more than 12,000 professionals across the disciplines that meet in a divorce file: attorneys, mediators, judicial officers, financial professionals, and mortgage and real estate practitioners. The association is an approved continuing legal education provider, an approved continuing judicial education provider, and an approved continuing education provider with CFP Board and the Institute for Divorce Financial Analysts.
Reserve your seat
Register for the October 14th session.
Free to attend · Live virtual · Recording available to registrants. Confirmation includes complete credit and accreditation detail.