WASHINGTON, DC—The guessing game is on again with Friday's excellent employment numbers: when will the Federal Reserve Bank raise interest rates and what products will be affected?

One concern the Fed has about its plans to raise interest rates is that, for all the warnings and discussion and pontification of the last year about the expected increase, investor may well be caught off guard.

In September Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen pointedly said that investors need to be prepared for the possibility that the Fed will raise interest rates sooner than they currently project if US economic performance continues to exceed expectations.

In reaction the markets merely shrugged.

Commercial real estate borrowers and developers tend to be a hardier and more pessimistic bunch, but it is possible even they could be caught short by an uptick in interest rates, especially in more mercurial products—such as bridge financing.

This product has changed substantially in the last few years to include other use cases beyond the typical short-term financing needs. Even more recently—within the last few months—observers have been surprised by the rapid drop in pricing, with some loans as low as 4%.

"Bridge financing is cheaper these days because debt is cheaper overall," says Eli Verschleiser, chairman of MultiGroup of Cos. "Credit lines are cheaper and there are more providers in the space so it is more competitive too," he tells GlobeSt.com.

This, of course, could change, very quickly, if rates were to rise unexpectedly.

In the meantime, though, times have never been as good for bridge lending as they are right now. Within the last month interest rates have been dropping even lower to 3%, reports Ari Hirt, a director at Mission Capital in New York City.

"We recently got a quote on a bridge loan at 3% for an apartment project in New York City," he tells GlobeSt.com. Eleven percent is reasonable, he adds—if you are talking about, say, unentitled land in California. But good collateral in good locations can find much better rates.

The company is securing a bridge loan for a hotel portfolio in North Carolina at 4%, Hirt says. "There are renovations going on, but the cash flow is still good," he explains.

For a 4% loan a company can secure financing in the 70s percent leverage. At 5% the leverage can rise even higher, he says.