The national Mortgage Bankers Association said yesterday that 7,535 residential property loans, or 4.5 percent of the loans statewide, were in foreclosure at the end of last year in Hawai’i, and that an additional 12,182 mortgages representing 7.3 percent of the market were delinquent but not yet in foreclosure. That means nearly 12 percent of Hawai’i homes are in foreclosure or threatened by foreclosure.

For the first time in almost three years, the number of homeowners falling behind on their loans nationwide is declining. The drop means the number of people losing their homes will start to fall. But some pain from the crisis is sure to persist. Because millions of people are already in foreclosure, deeply discounted houses will put pressure on home prices for years.

The problem is not expected to disappear this year for Hawaii, which saw foreclosures ramp up much later than most other states, said Daren Blomquist, marketing communications manager for RealtyTrac, which tracks nationwide foreclosures.”REOs were up 58 percent from December and 1,013 percent from January 2009,” Blomquist said. “This means that more Hawaii homeowners who went into default failed to get out of it. The most painful foreclosure category went up quite a bit in Hawaii.”

Foreclosure auction notices, a step where the homeowner can still save their home, decreased 31 percent from December but rose 241 percent from January 2009, he said. A triple-digit, year-over-year increase in statewide foreclosures in January left Hawaii with the highest back-to-back monthly total since 2005.

Despite a 15.1 percent dip in foreclosures from December, Hawaii foreclosures rose 286.4 percent in January to 1,302 filings from the year-ago 337, according to a report released today by RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for foreclosure properties.

In comparison, national foreclosures increased 15 percent to 315,716.

Percentage of mortgage loans past due