Massachusetts foreclosure filings shot up 81 percent in June compared to the year before, continuing a rise in foreclosure activity that began early last year, according to a Boston real estate tracker.
The Warren Group, which publishes the magazine Banker and Tradesman, said Tuesday that mortgage holders filed 886 petitions to foreclose in June, compared to 488 such filings a year before. That was steeper than the increase over the proceeding five months, in which foreclosure filings rose 60 percent.
“The increases in foreclosure starts that we have been seeing steadily for months now are likely to continue through the second half of the year,” said Tim Warren, the chief executive of The Warren Group, in a news release. “Some lenders had let a lot of delinquent mortgages accumulate in the pipeline over the past few years. Now that the market has improved and buyers are eager for affordable homes to purchase, the backlog is getting pushed through the system.”
Completed foreclosures also rose last month, although not as sharply as first-step filings. Lenders filed foreclosure deeds on 411 homes in June, compared to 305 the same month a year ago, a 34 percent increase. Over the first six months of the year, 2,034 homes were foreclosed on in Massachusetts, a 21 percent increase from the 1,679 recorded over the first half of last year.
Jack Newsham can be reached at jack.newsham@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @TheNewsHam.