Foreclosure notices surge to a record

The state's looming foreclosure crisis escalated last month as the number of homeowners threatened with foreclosure more than doubled from a year earlier.

Lenders last month filed foreclosure notices against 2,207 Massachusetts homeowners -- a one-month record -- that their mortgage payments were at least 30 days late, which is the initial notification that they are in danger of losing their homes.

Data on soaring foreclosures filed in the state's Land Court were released yesterday by ForeclosuresMass Corp., continuing a trend that began last year. In 2006, lenders filed 19,487 notices against homeowners, surpassing filings made in 1992, during the depths of a recession.

The filings "are scary," said Alan Pasnik, an analyst for Warren Group, a Boston research and publishing firm. "They're essentially double what they were."

The mortgage banking industry has said the primary reason filings are on the rise is an explosion in mortgage volume driven by the housing boom, which pushed home sales to record levels in Massachusetts and nationwide. Fewer than 1 percent of Massachusetts mortgages were involved in foreclosure proceedings last year, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, below the national average.

But the foreclosures are the dark side of a state housing market that may be pulling out of a protracted slump.

Jeremy Shapiro, the president of ForeclosuresMass, said the alarming increase in filings, combined with dropping prices, makes it likely that more people will lose their homes. It can take months after the initial filing for a house to be seized by its lender.

Typically, one way out of a mortgage going bad is to sell the house and pay it off.

But, "homeowners who purchased properties in the past few years," Shapiro said, "are now finding themselves with a property that's worth less than what they paid for."

Foreclosure filings nearly doubled last month in Barnstable and Bristol counties but were up sharply across the state: Worcester County filings, up 87.3 percent; Suffolk County, up 82.4 percent; and Essex County, up 78.7 percent. Only Nantucket reported fewer filings.

Kimberly Blanton can be reached at blanton@globe.com.