Making things even better for borrowers were the number of lenders competing for business. Life companies and alternative lenders, which includes REITs, finance companies and debt funds, led origination activity in Q3 2019, according to CBRE lender survey.

While Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac combined loan purchase volume totaled a record-setting $112.8 billion through September versus $90.7 billion for the same period a year ago, things fell off in the third quarter. But the Federal Housing Finance Agency announced a new volume cap that limits total production to $100 billion for each GSE over the five-quarter period starting this October, which gave the market more certainty moving forward.

"The agency business for the first couple of months of the third quarter was actually pretty anemic," Stoffers says. "The agencies were waiting to see how things played out. They all got off to a very hot start in the first half of the year. They definitely tapped on the brakes and we saw a little bit slow down there."

As the agencies fell off, other lenders stepped up. "The agencies definitely created some more head space, if you will, for the competition when they when they pulled back," Stoffers says. "We saw an increase in activity from the other lender types in the multifamily sector. We saw big pickups in activity from the life companies and the debt funds in particular." Life companies took approximately 29 percent of non-agency lending volume in Q3 2019, which was up from a 26 percent share in Q2 2019. Alternative lenders accounted for close to 30 percent of non-agency lending volume in Q3 2019. Commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) lenders accounted for 17.1 percent of volume in Q3 2019, which was an increase above the 13 percent posted in Q2 2019.

Not every lender saw increases though. Banks' share of lending originations fell from 35.2 percent in Q2 2019 to 24.2 percent in Q3 2019.

Overall, Stoffers feels good about future quarters. "I think we're in a good interest rate environment,' he says. "I think the spreads are reasonable and there's abundant capital coming from all sources, whether it's life company debt, funds and banks. CMBS is seeing somewhat of a resurgence. And we have some certainty around Freddie and Fannie with their scorecards being published for five quarters. So, we have clarity into 2020."