Full Swing, Lender Competition Heats Up

LIVINGSTON, NJ—In the wake of The Mortgage Bankers Association‘s Commercial Real Estate/Multifamily Housing Finance conference, which was held in Orlando in early February, we noted several takeaways—namely that the market is currently in full swing and competition is heating up between lenders, all of whom have lofty targets. Overall, 2014 looks to be a challenging year as loan maturities drop slightly and thus lower loan demand, however, transaction volume is picking up and this will help support production levels.

The Mortgage Bankers Association also released a number of reports during the convention, one of which projects originations of commercial and multifamily mortgages growing to $300 billion in 2014, a 7% increase from 2013 volumes, and continuing to rise to $333 billion in 2016. Originations of multifamily mortgages are forecast at $116 billion in 2014.