Green River Capital will manage commercial and residential REO for Utah-based Mountain America Credit Union through a partnership announced Tuesday. In March, GRC won a contract to manage REO sales for Freddie Mac. Now, this expansion into the credit union market is a “natural evolution,” GRC said, because many asset management systems were not designed to effectively handle their lower volume levels. GRC said it will offer a platform named REOConnex to allow community credit unions such as Mountain America to supervise the status of its properties. “Mountain America wanted to proactively manage its REO assets and reduce the burden on employees, allowing them to focus on quality member service,” said Brent Taggart, senior vice president of business development and client relations for GRC. Most of the REO for these smaller lenders will likely be commercial properties. In March, data analytics firm Trepp, showed more than 70% of the nonperforming loans on recently failed small banks were commercial real estate loans. For the 12 banks that failed in February, nonperforming CRE loans totaled $230 million with $65 million in residential loans. “As we anticipate continued challenges for the housing market, GRC is meeting the needs of community credit unions by allowing them to merge their REO properties to leverage its technology and benefit from the reduction in time and cost associated with maintaining our non-performing assets,” said Gene Erickson, chief operating officer of Mountain America Financial Services. Write to Jon Prior. Follow him on Twitter @JonAPrior.