Hello Realtors,

 As you can see, foreclosures are up in every county in the state of Massachusetts. Now is the time to get in front of these people and see if you can help them. There are potential short sale, auction and listing opportunities available, so get out there and help them!

Lenders initiated 29,607 petitions to foreclose on Massachusetts properties in 2007, or 55 percent more than the 19,112 filed in Land Court the year before, according to new statistics from The Warren Group, parent company of Banker & Tradesman.

Dukes County saw an 88 percent increase in foreclosure petitions filed in 2007 compared to the previous year, the highest percentage increase of any county in the state. The county, consisting almost entirely of island of Martha's Vineyard, saw 77 foreclosure petitions in 2007 and 41 in 2006. Suffolk County was the site of 3,584 foreclosure petitions in 2007, a 77 percent increase over the 2,028 foreclosures initiated a year earlier.

A petition to foreclose is the first step in a foreclosure proceeding. Not all petitions end in foreclosure, however. Some homeowners manage to sell their home or refinance. Others find the money they need or work out an alternate payment plan with their lender.

The number of foreclosure deeds recorded at registries of deeds rose at an even faster pace in the past year than petitions. In 2007, 7,653 foreclosure deeds were recorded - more than double the 3,086 filed in 2006. A foreclosure deed shows a lender has repossessed a property from the borrower.

Lenders also are filing more petitions to foreclose than at any time in recent years. In November and December of last year, they filed 2,723 and 2,729 foreclosures, respectively, in Massachusetts. Only August and October saw higher numbers; in both of those months, more than 3,000 petitions were filed.

A foreclosure petition can take months to resolve, but the increased petition numbers indicate more people will lose their homes in the coming year due to the widening crisis.

Jim Campen, executive director of Americans for Fairness in Lending and author of an annual research report on mortgage lending patterns in Greater Boston, said the numbers no longer surprise him.

"The very high numbers are no longer shocking, but they're appalling," he said. "There's a great human cost involved."

Campen said he sees a possible sign of hope in the fact that November and December had fewer foreclosure petitions filed than in August and October.

"There may be some seasonal pattern, but there have been increasing amounts of attention put on this since September," he noted. "It's possible that attention by regulators and the media resulted in some lenders not being so quick to foreclose ... it could be that some of the efforts to prevent foreclosures are beginning to work."

Campen said the number of foreclosure proceedings commenced and completed this year won't be dictated by the economy or home prices alone.

"Those are important," he said. "But it also will depend on what efforts are made by lenders, and what kind of pressure is put on lenders by regulators and legislators so that [homes] don't end up in foreclosure."

The top 20 companies filing petitions to foreclose in Massachusetts in 2007 included Deutsche Bank, Wells Fargo Bank, U.S. Bank, Bank of New York, Countrywide Home Loans, Lasalle Bank, Citimortgage, Chase Home Finance, Bank of America and Fannie Mae. Companies filing foreclosure petitions may not be the original lender, but often are loan servicers or bank investors that purchased the loans.

Six of the top 20 - including Deutsche Bank, which filed 4,652 petitions to foreclose in Massachusetts Land Court, more than any other foreclosing entity - were servicers that do not originate loans.

Chris Morrison

www.equity-returns.com