GMAC Real Estate, headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois, and Real Living, a full-service real estate company based in Columbus, Ohio, announced Wednesday that they are merging to form a residential real estate franchise with more than $20 billion in annual home sales.

Home prices have plummeted 40 to 60 percent from their recent peaks in some California and Florida markets, where the big bubbles of the last housing boom have popped with haste and brutal force.

EAS, a Roseville, California-based provider of property valuation and risk management solutions, has repositioned the company and unveiled new solutions that its says address the crisis of confidence in the mortgage industry and set a new standard for property valuations and collateral risk management.

NeighborWorks America announced Tuesday that it has awarded a total of $1.9 million in community stabilization grants to 38 local NeighborWorks organizations throughout the country.

Two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers were found not guilty of fraud charges Tuesday, in what is being called the first high-profile criminal case to come out of the subprime crisis and ensuing financial meltdown.

The Obama administration's mortgage relief programs are beginning to pick up steam.

Even as home prices are beginning to show signs of stabilizing and the industry is ramping up efforts to keep troubled borrowers in their homes, the latest market study from Jacksonville, Florida's Lender Processing Services (LPS) shows that mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures remain alarmingly elevated.

""Chase"":http://www.chase.com, the U.S. commercial banking business of New York-based ""JPMorgan Chase & Co."":http://www.jpmorganchase.com, announced Tuesday that it plans to hire 1,200 mortgage loan officers by the end of 2010.

The ideal time to invest in commercial real estate is 2010 that's when commercial property prices will hit bottom, according to a recently published survey of industry experts, including investors, developers, lenders, brokers, and consultants. The Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2010 study, released last week by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) and the Urban Land Institute (ULI), says commercial real estate (CRE) players predict vacancies to continue to increase and rents to decrease across all property sectors before the market hits bottom next year.

The National Association of Realtors announced Monday that it has acquired technology from LPS Real Estate Group,, a subsidiary of Florida-based Lender Processing Services Inc. (LPS), to create a database of all properties in the United States