ING Clarion Partners, among the largest real estate investment managers, is looking to raise capital through a non-traded REIT. But the proposed company, Clarion Property Trust Inc., won't charge hefty fees and will provide substantial flexibility to shareholders looking to redeem their investments.

The Chicago REIT is turning over the Chico Mall retail property in California to its CMBS lender. The debt on the property was not part of a broad renegotiation, resulting in term extensions that GGP had struck with lenders.

The New York investment manager is raising $250 million of equity that would be invested in mortgages and other debt instruments. It has also raised a $500 million credit line from CIBC World Markets, allowing it to leverage its capital. The fund is taking aim at the flood of upcoming loan maturities.

Freddie Mac is developing a program to facilitate the placement of mezzanine loans on properties that it finances. It will rely on financing partners that would fund loans that would be subordinate to its loans and allow property owners to borrow up to 85 percent of their properties' values.

Blackstone Group is trying to sell the 615,942-square-foot EQT Plaza, just three months before its $30 million of securitized debt matures and two months after its largest tenant began paying rent. Holliday Fenoglio Fowler has been tapped to market the property.

The Chicago REIT, which has been in bankruptcy since last year, has decided to give a 1.17 million-square-foot retail mall in Colorado Springs, Colo., to its lenders. The property is backed by $121.6 million of debt that is securitized through LB-UBS Commercial Mortgage Trust, 2006-C1.

A whopping $585 million of CMBS loans were liquidated in December, the largest monthly volume of liquidations ever. Special servicers, facing growing workloads, have become far more active in disposing of the loans they're handling. Meanwhile, CMBS delinquencies continued to climb, hitting a rate of 5.22 percent.

Crown Northcorp, which late last year convinced a jury that LaSalle Bank had breached its representations and warranties on a pair of small-balance apartment loans that were securitized in 2006, is suing the lender again, in Oklahoma and Nevada, claiming it breached the "reps and warranties" on 17 other loans it securitized.

Private-equity funds targeting real estate in North America last year raised $21.4 billion, a drop of 71.5 percent from the year before, according to market research firm Preqin. Last year, 50 funds had capital closings, compared with 130 in 2008. The average size of funds fell to $428 million from $577 million.

The FDIC is unveiling three large portfolios of residential and hotel loans that it seized from failed banks. Deutsche Bank will offer a stake in a $420.1 million portfolio of hotel construction loans, while Stifel Nicolaus will offer stakes in two portfolios of home loans totaling roughly $1.5 billion.