With the residential real estate market tanking, the indexes have been receiving a great deal of attention and are regularly quoted in the national news.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it gives S&P all rights and ownership associated with the index family, including the right to license and sublicense the indexes to be used as the bases for investable products. Currently, 10 of the metropolitan areas covered by the indexes and one of the composite indexes underlie futures contracts and options on futures that trade on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange; among other strategies, the contracts can be used to hedge the value of an individual's home. However, the volumes are very low, with fewer than 3,000 housing futures contracts trading in all of 2007.

The decision seems to be a smart choice for S&P. Lately it has been working to expand the types of indexes it offers into new asset classes. The high-profile home price indexes have been a part of that initiative, and S&P's buyout of MacroMarkets echoes its acquisition last year of the remaining share in the S&P GSCI that it did not own from Goldman Sachs.

"Since their launch in mid-2006, the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices have quickly become the leading measure of residential home prices in the United States," says Alex Matturri, Executive Managing Director at Standard & Poor's Portfolio Services. The purchase will allow S&P to work more closely with its customers, he added.

The move may be a good one for MacroMarkets as well. The firm is still getting off the ground, really: It currently only has two products trading, and they aren't attracting a tremendous amount of assets. The MACROshares Oil Up Tradeable Shares (AMEX: UCR) and MACROshares Oil Down Tradeable Shares (AMEX: DCR) have combined total assets of a bit more than $60 million. With two more products in registration that seek to capture the upward and downward performance of the healthcare subsegment of the consumer price index, the firm may need to raise some cash in order to launch them. Ultimately, however, the firm may simply be divesting itself of noncore operations, reflecting a desire to focus on the fund operations.

The S&P/Case-Shiller family of indexes tracks the prices of single-family residential homes. It includes individual indexes for each of 20 U.S. metropolitan areas as well as 10-city and 20-city composite indexes that are all calculated on a monthly basis. Subindexes for low-, mid- and high-priced homes are also available for most of the metropolitan areas. In addition, the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index is calculated quarterly and covers all nine U.S. Census Divisions. Lately, the indexes have been experiencing record-breaking declines.