GlobeSt.com: How would you characterize the health of small-balance loans currently and looking ahead?

Jackson: Certainly, for the opportunities around affordable and workforce housing from an investor and lender point of view, these loans will be very strong. With the supply-and-demand issues and available credit from other lending sources, this will continue to be a robust growth area with dependable credit. Looking at the overall SBL market beyond multifamily, this continues to be an exciting and underserved market today, for the same reasons banks haven't met their historical level of loans. There are very few national platforms focused on that as we are.

GlobeSt.com: What are your expectations from the agencies in the next year?

Jackson: This year, Freddie will originate between $6.5 billion and $6.8 billion in small-balance loans. Next year, it will be between $8 billion and $9 billion. It's continuing to get an increasing share of the market. As investors become more knowledgeable about how competitive this product is, it becomes a more well-defined process that makes it easy to get a loan. If you've done one, the next one is easy. There's more acceptance of this product, and it will take a bigger piece of this marketplace.

We plan to be one of the dominant players in this space and play along with Freddie as it takes more market share. SBL is a niche that if you do it well and set your processes and technology up to be a good player, you can do well; if not, it's a hard business. We at Sabal believe this has contributed well to our growth since we have really focused on doing this efficiently. We have designed a platform around SBL, have put the tools in place to do it well and are getting rewarded for it. Freddie in some respects has done exactly the same thing: they have a dedicated team of people for SBL with focused expertise around this specific business.

GlobeSt.com: What is your outlook on the CRE finance market as a whole for 2018?

Jackson: Everyone is looking forward to continued robust growth. As economic growth continues, it will drive every area of CRE: multifamily, job creation and the core real estate areas of industrial, office, warehouse and self-storage. These all get affected when the economy is booming. On Wall Street, a lot of people are factoring in tax reform and expectations for GDP growth as well. If that occurs as it is supposed to, the CRE market will really get rewarded. When we look at our niche, we have advantages that give us better protection. Spreads have come in because it's more competitive; people are chasing large deals. In the SBL space, there are not national platforms set up around this, so there's less of that kind of pressure. We think it's a good time to be in the lending business, related to SBL.