WASHINGTON, DC—Two mortgage banking sectors, one organization, one slow-growth economy, two divergent outlooks for the coming year. The Mortgage Bankers Association said last week that it expects commercial and multifamily originations to be essentially flat in 2018. On the residential side, though, MBA is expecting a year-over-year increase in purchase mortgage originations, even as refinancing activity is expected to slide.

Flat growth doesn't equate to a decline in volume, though. MBA's latest prediction of a 5% annual increase in commercial and multifamily originations this year, to $515 billion, comes after the association's projection in June of a slight decline for 2017 volume.

Yet if the prediction holds true that next year will show essentially no gains over '17 levels, it will represent the first year since 2009 that Y-O-Y comparisons for commercial and multifamily mortgages don't represent a meaningful increase. The annual growth rate was steeper in the years following the Global Financial Crisis—2010 volume was 44.8% over the year prior, for example, and 2011 brought another 55% improvement—but each year since the downturn has seen larger numbers than the one before.