LOS ANGELES-Multifamily was on everyone’s mind at the ULI Fall Meeting in Los Angeles, where the apartment market might well be said to have been the star of the event. In sessions throughout the Fall Meeting at the L.A. Convention Center from Tuesday through Friday last week—and in countless conversations with each other as well as in video and print interviews with GlobeSt.com—attendees at the conference expressed a consensus that multifamily is the star of the commercial real estate investment world right now.

The meeting venue, too, took a bow. John Cushman, co-chairman of Cushman & Wakefield, probably said it best in a video interview with GlobeSt.com at a reception the company hosted Wednesday evening. Cushman pointed out that the Downtown Los Angeles of 2011 differed markedly from the Los Angeles of 2005, when the ULI last held its Fall Meeting here. Downtown development at L.A. Live, the Staples Center and other areas, the Cushman & Wakefield co-chairman said, has transformed the area surrounding the convention center.

Multifamily was on the agenda at the last day of the Fall Meeting on Friday, as capital markets experts in one of the concurrent sessions discussed the “The Battle For Multifamily Space,” which examined how lenders are vying for multifamily financing deals, and another panel discussed the overall multifamily investment market.

In the lenders’ panel, representatives from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and private capital sources talked about what kinds of deals they are looking to finance, underwriting standards, the return of interest-only financing and other facets of lending for apartment deals.

Michael Berman, president and CEO of CW Capital, noted that although life insurance companies emerged early this year as serious competitors to Fannie and Freddie on a growing number of deals, he also sensed a pullback by the life companies later in the year in response to the European debt crisis and other concerns. “The life companies were getting pretty aggressive until about June,” Berman said, but after that they seemed to become more cautious not only because of the European debt crisis but also because of worries about a possible double-dip in the US economy and the continuing struggle to create jobs in the US.

Berman and the other panelists generally agreed that multifamily financing is readily available, but the availability and terms depend on the specific property, the geographic market, the borrower’s track record and other factors that lenders scrutinize a lot more closely today than they did before the downturn. “This is a great time to be putting 10-year money on your properties,” said Heidi McKibben, vice president of multifamily customer management at Fannie Mae.

In a question-and-answer session during the panel discussion, an audience member asked about the return of interest-only financing. Such financing is returning for some deals, Berman said, but it’s nowhere near as available as it was in the days leading up to the downturn, when scores of deals were financed interest-only, often for the full term of the loan. “Those days are gone,” Berman said.

Although multifamily was arguably the star of this year’s Fall Meeting, it was only one of myriad topics in the dozens of panels and presentations at the meeting, which each year explores virtually every facet of urban development and the forces shaping it. Friday’s sessions, for example, ranged from research on the forces shaping real estate development in the new economy to demographics, global influences, overseas development, medical office buildings, reinventing retail, the role of mass transit, the importance of infrastructure and a host of others.

Earlier in the week, as GlobeSt.com reported, the ULI conducted a webinar unveiling its annual Emerging Trends survey, other panels tackled topics like the economy and industry trends, and still others addressed the general outlook for 2012. Next year’s ULI Fall Meeting is scheduled for Oct. 18-21 in Denver.