Massachusetts Realtors were on Beacon Hill Thursday to testify on behalf of a House resolution to help protect vacant homes from scrap metal thieves.

While the foreclosure crisis has passed and the market is healthy, the problem of copper theft from vacant and occupied homes continues to be a problem that hurts neighborhoods and home values.

“It seems an improved market with fewer vacant homes and lower copper prices hasn’t stopped criminals from breaking into houses and stripping them of copper and other metals,” 2015 MAR President Corinne Fitzgerald, broker-owner of Fitzgerald Real Estate in Greenfield, said in a statement.

Once thieves strip copper pipes and other metals from a vacant home, conventional financing is more difficult to obtain and the sale price could fall.

H226, “An Act Regulating Secondary Metals Dealings,” would create a second-hand metal dealer registry to give tools to law enforcement to fight scrap metal theft. The bill requires the registration of secondary metals dealers with the municipality’s chief of police or designee.

If passed, it would also require dealers to keep certain records and prohibits dealers from accepting certain kinds of metals. In addition, it requires dealers to hold onto certain identifiable property if it has been reported stolen by law enforcement.