Bay State Foreclosures Jump 13% in February

The number of foreclosures started by lenders in Massachusetts during the month of February increased 13.2 percent from the prior month but was down 7.5 percent from a year ago, according to the ""Warren Group"":http://www.thewarrengroup.com, a Boston-based real estate research firm.

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Lenders filed 2,122 petitions to foreclose â€" which mark the first step in the foreclosure process in Massachusetts â€" in February, up from 1,874 in January but down from 2,295 in February 2009. A total of 3,996 petitions to foreclose have been filed in the first two months of 2010, a 6.1 percent drop from 4,255 a year earlier.

""In the last six months, an average of about 2,100 foreclosure petitions were filed each month,"" said Timothy M. Warren Jr., CEO of the Warren Group. ""That's a pretty high level, but the pace is much lower than it was in the early part of 2008, when lenders were filing an average of about 3,000 petitions to foreclose a month.""

Foreclosure deeds, which represent completed foreclosures, fell 19.6 percent to 917 from 1,141 in January. But February foreclosures were 10.4 percent higher than the 831 foreclosure deeds recorded in February 2009.

The number of auction announcements tracked by the Warren Group in February more than tripled compared to a year ago. There were 2,771 auction notices last month, up from 917 in February 2009 and 16.2 percent more than the 2,385 auction notices in the prior month.