WASHINGTON, DC-It is little secret that commercial real estate industry tends to skew  conservative. That said, one could be forgiven for assuming that an exception to this philosophy would have been made for the GSEs. Not so, though, at least according to GlobeSt.com's latest reader poll.

This week we asked, "Is the FHFA right to scale back support for GSEs?"

This question, of course, referred to the surprise speech Federal Housing Finance Agency Acting Director Edward J. DeMarco made at the beginning of the month in which he announced that, among other changes, multifamily finance would be trimmed by 10%. He also recommended a new securitization infrastructure be put in place.

With that as the backdrop, we offered our readers the following choices to the question about the FHFA's plans:

• Heck no, multifamily at Fannie and Freddie have a stellar track record

• Maybe, but the agency should have given the market more warning and not sprung it on us

• Yes, the government has no business in what should be a private market endeavor

• No, once the government pulls its support the asset class will shut suddenly and dramatically. There is no indication that the private sector will be able to fill the void.

The largest portion of readers, 44%, opined that the government has no business in what should be a private market endeavor.

This group was followed by the GSEs supporters, which at 27%, noted that Fannie and Freddie have a stellar record.

Eighteen percent of respondents said the agency should have given the market more warning and 11% fear that once the government pulls its support the asset class will shut suddenly and dramatically.

In a way, it is not that surprising that the industry—at least based on this one poll---is sanguine about going it alone. In a piece we ran shortly after the announcement, several executives GlobeSt.com interviewed predicted that the multifamily sector will survive the pullback by GSEs -- and maybe even thrive. Jacob Frydman, chairman and CEO of United Realty Partners, told us, as just one example, that the move will likely bring discipline to marginal markets and could ultimately be a positive event.

Not everyone has been so blasé though. In a later interview with us, Willy Walker, CEO of Walker & Dunlop, pointed out that the current GSE model "has been successful and highly profitable for taxpayers because it puts private capital in the first-loss position."

Perhaps the most spirited defense of the current model came from Peter Donovan, immediate past chairman of the National Multi Housing Council, at a speech at the American Enterprise Institute. "The GSE multifamily experience was not the single family experience," he said. "In times of severe economic crisis it worked even better than any of us imagined. It was quite simply the model that needs to be emulated because it works."