Insights and Timing to help you Prepare for the New URLA

Are you ready for the new URLA?  Starting July 1, 2019, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will begin the optional use period of the redesigned Uniform Residential Loan Application (“URLA”) published jointly by the Government-Sponsored (“GSEs”).  Starting February 1, 2020, all loans with an application date on or after February 1, 2020 and purchased by Fannie or Freddie must contain the redesigned URLA. 

https://www.fanniemae.com/singlefamily/uniform-residential-loan-application

At Docutech, we are committed to providing exceptional service and value to help improve regulatory compliance for our clients. As such, ever since the Federal National Mortgage Association (“FNMA”) and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (“FHLMC”) revealed their newest versions of FNMA Form 1003/FHLMC Form 65 (“Uniform Residential Loan Application” or “URLA”) on August 23, 2016, we have been publishing various posts addressing different aspects of the URLA (and other documents associated with it), ranging from legal analysis to system support. Check them all out here:

• When the new URLA was originally introduced, we provided a summary of key changes to the URLA (see https://compliance.docutech.com/2016/10/05/recent-changes-kbyo-proposal-and-new-urla/).

• We announced the creation of copies of FNMA’s and FHLMC’s “Demographic Information Addendum” – which is used as a temporary addendum to the current URLA in order to gather key “Home Mortgage Disclosure Act” (“HMDA”) data - into two new, generic forms (Cx20787 and Cx20788) within our library (see https://compliance.docutech.com/2016/12/02/new-document-1003-demographic-information-addendum-cx20787/).

• We published an article on how the loan application requirements and restrictions of Federal Regulations B (12 CFR Pt. 1002) and C (12 CFR Pt. 1003) interrelate with each other and how this impacts the new URLA (see https://compliance.docutech.com/2017/10/30/loan-applications-regulations-b-c-fnmafhlmc/).

• We updated our generic versions of the “Demographics Addendum” (Cx20787 and Cx20788) to match the latest versions published by FNMA and FHLMC on September 26, 2017 (see https://compliance.docutech.com/2017/09/27/compliance-news-urla-and-data-collection-model-form-updates/ and https://compliance.docutech.com/2017/10/31/document-updates-1003-demographic-information-addendum-cx20787-spanish-translation-aid-1003-demographic-information-addendum-cx20788/).

• We noted FNMA’s and FHLMC’s changes to their previously published version of the URLA when these were announced on December 19, 2017 and began working on conforming our working copy of the new URLA to match these changes (see https://compliance.docutech.com/2017/12/19/11898-2/).

• New global field mappings and print conditions were made for our versions of the “Demographic Information Addendum” (Cx20787 and Cx20788) to fix some issues with printing these documents with one of our generic copies of the current URLA (Cx4193) (see https://compliance.docutech.com/2017/12/13/new-field-mapping-configuration-update-print-1003-demographic-information-addendum/).

• We added an option for clients to have the “Universal Loan Identifier” (required by Federal Regulation C to be reported for HMDA purposes) print in the right-hand footer on page 1 of our generic copies of the current URLA (Cx4193 and Cx17663), to meet any investor requirements (see https://compliance.docutech.com/2017/12/28/document-updates-uli-fnma-form-1003-demographic-information-addendum/). The new URLA includes areas for listing the ULI.

• The new URLA contains a “Language Preference” section where applicants may designate a preference as to which language they would like to communicate in during the loan origination process. This was added to help support borrower’s with “limited English proficiency.” The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (“FHFA”) created a model “Language Translation Disclosure” to correspond with this. We created a generic copy of this form for clients who wish to use it (see https://compliance.docutech.com/2018/10/15/compliance-news-fhfa-launches-language-translation-disclosure/ and https://compliance.docutech.com/2018/10/25/new-document-notice-to-borrowers-about-language-cx22719/).

• We’ve also created a new, generic copy of FNMA Form 1008/FHLMC Form 1077 (Cx22822) which matches the latest revision published by FNMA and FHLMC (which revisions were meant to correspond with the new URLA (see https://compliance.docutech.com/2018/12/05/compliance-news-updated-fnma-form-1008/ and https://compliance.docutech.com/2019/03/09/new-document-1008-uniform-underwriting-and-transmittal-summary-12-2018-cx22822/).

Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have published a wide variety of highly useful documentation related to the new URLA covering the below topics:

• Timeline
• General Fact Sheet about the Redesign
• General FAQ about the Redesign
• The official Redesigned FNMA Form 1003/FHLMC Form 65, both English and a Spanish Translation Aid
• Sample interactive and dynamic forms
• Sample completed forms
• Guidance on how to populate the Redesigned 1003
• Guidance on how to format the Redesigned 1003
• A comparison of the differences between the current 1003 to the Redesigned 1003

Visit Fannie Mae’s resources here and Freddie Mac’s resources here.

In addition to the above resources, Docutech has also created supplemental documentation including: 

• Details about the fields that will be used on the Resigned 1003
• Notes and FAQ about Docutech’s implementation of the Redesigned 1003
• Sample forms printed through ConformX

To learn more, call us at 800.497.3584 or email us at support@docutech.com