Foreclosure activity in Massachusetts isn’t easing. A new report from The Warren Group shows that lenders started and finished more foreclosures statewide in April than they did a year earlier.

And Banker & Tradesman reports this week that properties that have entered the foreclosure process are moving faster to the auction stage. As Colleen M. Sullivan reports in this week’s issue of Banker & Tradesman, lenders are getting more efficient at handling foreclosures. The fact that banks lifted foreclosure moratoriums, most of them instituted in early 2009, has also sped the process up.

The pick-up in home sales activity has probably also encouraged lenders to move ahead with auctions in hopes of selling the properties and avoiding holding them in their own REO portfolios.

The news comes as federal officials announced that more trial home loan modifications are getting canceled. The U.S. Treasury said 277,640 trial loan modifications were cancelled in April compared to 155,173 in March. Why?

Mortgage servicers are disqualifying borrowers who have not met the income documentation guidelines or who can’t keep up with the reduced monthly payments under the modified loans.

Apparently, the federal program known as the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, will require homeowners to prove that they have the income to qualify for a mortgage modification starting in June. In the past, mortgage servicers and lenders were taking the word of borrowers that they had a certain income level in order to reduce their mortgage payments.

All of this points to one thing – the foreclosure problem is far from over.