The Uniform Residential Loan Application (URLA), also referred to as the 1003 Mortgage Application, is the industry standard form used by nearly all mortgage lenders in the United States. This basic form must be completed by a borrower to apply for a mortgage. While some lenders may use alternative forms or simply accept basic borrower information about their identity, property type and value, the vast majority of lenders rely on the 1003 form.
The URLA was developed by the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Company (Freddie Mac) as a standardized form for the industry. Mortgages need to documented according to Fannie and Freddie’s standards since both entities require the use of Form 1003, or Form 65, its Freddie Mac equivalent, for any mortgage they consider for purchase. It is simpler for lenders to use the appropriate form at the outset than to try to transfer information from a proprietary form to a 1003 when it comes time to sell the mortgage.
While the URLA has been in use for decades, the format and content of the form has changed from time to time. On October 13, 2015, after years of discussion, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) published massive revisions to Regulation C, which implements the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). Among other changes the revisions revised the demographic information collected on borrowers for home mortgage loans. As a result the URLA needed to be expanded to collected the revised demographic date by the January 1,2018 effective date of the HMDA changes.
The CFPB, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did not play well together and were unable to complete the project by the effective date, but did manage to cobble together a Demographic Information Addendum.
The bigger revisions, which go far beyond collecting expanded demographic data, expanded the form from four pages to eight pages. On August 23, 2016 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac published the redesigned Uniform Residential Loan Application (URLA). Subsequently the CFPB provided clarification to its regulations that in turn delayed completion of the URLA. Along the way Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made additional changes.
The most recent version of the uniform Residential Loan Application (URLA) has been published. According to the current schedule, acceptance of the form by FNMA and FHLMC will begin September 1, 2020, and use of the new form will be mandatory on November 1, 2020. The current version of the URLA will no longer be accepted on or after November 1, 2020.
The revised forms, including the Borrower Information (nine pages in length), the Additional Borrower, the Unmarried Addendum, the Lender Information, and the Continuation Sheet are available here.
For additional resources on the topic of URLA visit the following pages: