The lag time between the signing of residential foreclosure deeds and when they’re recorded at registries of deeds as final is exceeding 200 days, on occasion, in Middlesex County – one of the Bay State counties most impacted by foreclosures.

And while the expected waiting time for such recordings typically hovers between 30 and 45 days, during two recent months at the Middlesex North Registry, about 15 percent of signed deeds took more than 90 days to record.

Lenders cannot sell a foreclosed property until it’s officially theirs and are the hardest-hit by the lag, said Jon Davis, a Marshfield-based foreclosure attorney whose law firm, Stanton & Davis, processes about 15 percent of the state’s foreclosure cases.

Communities where the residences are located also suffer if a property whose ownership is not clear is neglected.

Davis and another Boston-area foreclosure attorney, who declined to be identified, said judgments that verify the lender’s assertion that a foreclosed-upon homeowner is not serving in the U.S. military, in accordance with the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, are being held up in a backlogged Massachusetts Land Court, preventing some foreclosed-upon properties from immediately being recorded as such.

“I have boxes waiting [for that judgement] to be recorded sitting by my feet,” Davis said.

In Massachusetts, a foreclosure auction can take place once the lender’s determination that the homeowner is not serving in the military is complete. But the Land Court judgment is required for the foreclosure to be recorded as final.

With the numbers piling up – 7,653 deeds were recorded in 2007, more than double the 3,086 recorded in 2006 – the court is now nearly three months behind, Davis said, although not all cases are delayed. Massachusetts’ lone Land Court office, in Boston, handles all the judgments.

At the Middlesex North Registry, about 15 percent of the deeds recorded in two randomly selected months (September 2007 and January 2008) were signed more than 90 days earlier. In Plymouth County, one of five randomly selected, recently recorded foreclosure deeds had been signed 70 days earlier.

Norfolk County, which includes mostly wealthier suburban communities that have not suffered as much from the foreclosure crisis as other regions, has not seen similar delays, according to First Assistant Register Richard Kennedy.

Davis and the Boston-area foreclosure attorney said the court can’t be blamed for its backlog.

“This isn’t their fault. This is volume, and they only have so much of a budget,” Davis said.

The Land Court doesn’t get any portion of the $255 foreclosure petition filing fee it could use to pay for staff increases to deal with volume, noted the Boston attorney, who added that Massachusetts is the only state, to his knowledge, that requires a Land Court judgment on the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. Davis said Colorado has a similar procedure.

Both said lender procedures to verify a homeowner isn’t in the military are exhaustive. The law requires them to attempt to contact the homeowner directly, and publish that request for information in a local newspaper. If a homeowner is found to be an active service member, his or her foreclosure proceedings are delayed.

No one has slipped through the cracks, to either attorney’s knowledge. Both said lenders’ due diligence to find active members of the military has turned up just a handful of eligible homeowners.

The waiting period between lenders’ efforts and the final Land Court judgment hasn’t found any additional members of the military eligible for a foreclosure deferral, in their experience, they said – though it does, on rare occasions, allow foreclosed-upon homeowners to come up with the funds in arrears.

Last November, Massachusetts Land Court Recorder Deborah Patterson told Banker & Tradesman that the court did not have enough staff to handle the 78.5 percent increase it saw between 2006 and 2007 in mortgage complaints lenders filed against property owners.

Patterson said the court had 52 employees, eight of whom handle data entry. Two more employees were recently hired, but two left recently, she added.

But she said she’s comfortable with the court’s hiring methods and staff levels.

The delays stem simply from the ever-increasing number of foreclosures, she said. “There are thousands. Hopefully, it will turn around.”