Housing Market Development

U.S. foreclosure filings more than doubled in the second quarter from a year earlier as falling homeprices left borrowers owing more on mortgages than theirproperties were worth. One in every 171 U.S. homeowners lost their house to foreclosure, received a default notice or was warned of a pending auction, an increase of 121 percent from a year earlier and a 14 percent rise from the first quarter, RealtyTrac Inc. said today ina statement. Almost 740,000 properties were in some stage of theforeclosure process, the most since the Irvine, California-basedreal estate data company began reporting in January 2005. Bank seizures in the first half of the year increased by 154percent to 370,179 from the same period in 2007, RealtyTrac said. Last year's second-quarter data on bank repossessions was notavailable, according to RealtyTrac. Economists estimated 2.5 million homes nationwide will enter the foreclosure process this year, up from about 1.5 million in 2007.