BRAVE for ClickFORMS Users

ClickFORMS and BRAVE Are in Different Lanes

ClickFORMS by Bradford Technologies is one of the most widely used residential appraisal authoring platforms in the U.S. It handles URAR, 1004, 1073, 2055, and the full library of GSE and lender residential forms. It is a strong product — for residential work.

BRAVE is the Banking Real Estate Appraisal Valuation Exchange — a data standard for commercial real estate appraisals, created by Valcre. The 99 BRAVE fields cover office, retail, industrial, multifamily, hospitality, and other commercial property types. There is no residential BRAVE form, and ClickFORMS does not export BRAVE.

When Residential Appraisers Need to Care About BRAVE

There are three common scenarios:

1. Mixed-practice appraisers who do residential work in ClickFORMS but take on the occasional small commercial or 5+ unit multifamily assignment for a regional bank.
2. Residential firms with a commercial subsidiary where the residential side is on ClickFORMS but the commercial side uses Excel or a separate commercial platform.
3. Lender-side reviewers at banks where the same review team handles both residential (1004 / URAR) and commercial (BRAVE) appraisals.

For scenarios 1 and 2, BRAVE delivery requires moving the commercial appraisal off ClickFORMS for production. For scenario 3, the reviewer needs to know how each format works.

Three Paths to BRAVE Delivery for ClickFORMS-Centric Firms

Path 1: Add a commercial appraisal platform

The cleanest path. Adopt Valcre Pro or Enterprise for the commercial work — it includes native BRAVE export. Keep ClickFORMS for residential. Two platforms, but each is optimized for its job.

Path 2: Use the BRAVE Excel template

If commercial volume is low (a few assignments per year), manually populate the published BRAVE Excel template. The 99 fields are well-documented at usebrave.org. Use the BRAVE Compliance Checklist before delivery. This is more error-prone than native export but workable for low volume.

Path 3: PDF + post-extraction

Produce the commercial appraisal in whatever tool you prefer (Word, Excel, an old commercial template). Use a BRAVE extraction service to convert the finished PDF into a validated BRAVE file. This is what services like AppraisalAPI provide.

Field Coverage Gap

The fields most likely to be missing or weak when a residential appraiser moves to commercial:

• Property.Type and Property.Subtype — commercial classification (office, retail subtype, industrial subtype, etc.) is structured differently than residential
• Income category (16 fields) — residential appraisal rarely uses an income approach; commercial requires PGI/EGI/NOI/expenses/cap rate
• Value.CapRate, Value.DiscountRate, Value.TerminalCapRate — DCF fields familiar to commercial appraisers, often new to residential
• Property.UnitsCount, Property.NetRentableArea vs Property.GrossBuildingArea — the GBA / NRA distinction is critical commercially

For property-type-specific guidance, see BRAVE Fields for Multifamily, Office, Retail, or Industrial.

Lender-Side: Reviewing BRAVE Without Native Support

If your bank's review team is on ClickFORMS for residential reviews and needs to also review commercial BRAVE files, ClickFORMS will not ingest BRAVE natively. Most lenders pipe BRAVE XLSX into their loan origination system directly, with the reviewer comparing the structured data to the PDF appraisal in parallel windows. This is the workflow Bank OZK uses, per Valcre's published materials.

Don't Try to Hack a Residential Form into BRAVE

BRAVE is not "URAR for commercial." The schemas don't overlap meaningfully — different property types, different valuation approaches, different field categories. Don't attempt to map a 1004 PDF into the BRAVE Excel template by hand. The results will fail lender review.

Quick Links

• Export BRAVE from Valcre — the native path
• BRAVE Excel Template — for manual population
• BRAVE Compliance Checklist — pre-delivery validation
• What Does BRAVE Stand For? — the standard's definition