Number-crunchers from Boston’s Department of Neighborhood Development, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the state Division of Banks have identified some surprising facts about foreclosures.

Officials from those agencies gathered at a Harvard Kennedy School of Government forum this month to share data and insights on the home foreclosure problems plaguing Massachusetts. Among the more troubling aspects of the current situation is the number of borrowers experiencing problems with their mortgages soon after receiving them and well before those with adjustable loans are scheduled to see their interest rates reset to higher levels.

The scope of the troubles is worsening. Lenders’ petitions to foreclose on Bay State homes recently hit their highest level in three years.

There were 3,115 petitions to foreclose filed in Massachusetts Land Court in August, the most recent month for which data is available, according to The Warren Group, Banker & Tradesman’s parent company. That is a 75 percent increase compared with August 2006, when 1,775 petitions were filed, and more than 200 percent above the 1,016 foreclosure petitions filed in August 2005.

But the Boston officials at the Kennedy School forum – the latest event in a fair-housing-issues speaker series co-sponsored by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies and the Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston – said the city has helped nearly 200 households avoid foreclosure. About 840 troubled borrowers have requested assistance since the city’s Foreclosure Prevention Program started in May 2006.

More than half the Boston homeowners facing foreclosure this year have had their loans for less than two years, said Department of Neighborhood Development Deputy Director for Home Buyers Assistance Bill Cotter. While resetting adjustable-rate loans have been cited as a major cause for the current foreclosure problems, Cotter said that many of the borrowers experiencing difficulty have actually had their mortgages for too short a time to see rate resets occur.

Cotter also said 65 percent of foreclosing loans in the first half of 2007 are purchase, rather than refinance, loans.

“Most people think [foreclosures are only a problem for] people who tapped out their equity in a refinance,” Cotter said. “But it’s also people who got purchase loans at the very peak of the last real estate cycle. As home values decline, they [borrowers] go underwater, and unless you can get the lender to cram down [modify terms of] the loan, you’ve got a problem.”

DND Deputy Director for Policy Development and Research Bob Gehret said he expects Boston will suffer a second wave of foreclosures when adjustable-rate loans originated in the past two years start resetting.

“For the most part, the people being foreclosed on now got in trouble because the loans were not affordable to them in the first place,” he said.

The Warren Group has collected similar data comparing ownership experience with foreclosure petition dates. It shows that nearly one-third of Massachusetts homeowners facing foreclosure in 2007 have owned their homes for less than two years.

The Division of Banks has obtained temporary foreclosure stays for half of the 1,000 people who have called a hotline it set up for that purpose in April. The DOB has interceded on behalf of borrowers seeking help by requesting lenders delay foreclosure and by referring borrowers to credit councilors. Some homeowners succeeded in resolving their problems, but some stays have since expired and foreclosures proceeding resumed.

Default Rates

Despite all the problems, the Bay State’s situation compares favorably to the foreclosure trends nationwide, a Federal Reserve Bank analyst said.

“Even though what you see in New England is really bad, we are in no way the worst,” said Policy Analyst Julia Reade.

“Foreclosures in New England are near the national average,” she said, unlike in some Midwestern and Southwestern states where foreclosure activity is much higher.

Boston city officials said that in Suffolk County, the foreclosure problem was worse 15 years ago than it is today.

In 1992, when New England was in the midst of a devastating recession and several banks failed, 1,679 foreclosure deeds were recorded in Boston, said DND’s Gehret.

There were 3,454 home sales in Boston that year, Gehret said, meaning more than four foreclosures took place for every 10 sales.

A foreclosure deed is the final step in a foreclosure when ownership of the property is transferred from the borrower to the lender, and the transaction is recorded at a state or county registry of deeds.

City officials estimate that about 640 foreclosure deeds will be recorded in Boston by the end of this year.

A major impediment to helping borrowers and tenants facing foreclosure, and in preventing wide-scale problems from recurring, is the state government’s inability to regulate out-of-state lenders, said local officials and housing advocates at the Nov. 14 forum.

DOB Chief Operating Officer David Cotney noted that many lenders with which his agency is working on behalf of borrowers facing foreclosure are outside the agency’s jurisdiction. Even lenders with a local presence may be beyond reach if they are chartered and regulated at the federal level.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley spoke of the same problem at a Congressional hearing in Boston in October. She said that of the top five lenders to file foreclosure petitions in Boston, all but one was a federally chartered bank. According to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling, Coakley said, national banks and their operating subsidiaries are effectively exempt from state examination and state enforcement of banking laws. Coakley called for the limitation of federal preemption of state laws to restore a more effective dual oversight system.

Housing advocates said many lenders are doing little to help owners and that the government seems powerless when it comes to requesting that they slow the foreclosure process and work with troubled borrowers to resolve problems. They also said that many renters are being caught in the middle of the difficulties and are being forced to vacate when a landlord’s property is foreclosed upon.

“The city, the Fed and the [Division of Banks] are all doing really good things, but it’s not enough to help people in foreclosure now,” Fair Housing Center board member Nadine Cohen said after the event.

Cohen, an attorney recently hired by Greater Boston Legal Services to head its new foreclosure prevention and predatory lending project, said she’s especially concerned about the effect of foreclosures on tenants.

“I just got an e-mail about a 77-year-old blind tenant who had been in his building [in Boston] for 45 years, and is being evicted by Deutsche Bank following a foreclosure,” she said. “In this case, there are some buyers interested, but Deutsche Bank won’t sell.”

Following a similar story told at the Harvard forum, Cotney said he didn’t want to “defend” such actions, but did understand why they occur. He said banks often don’t want to be landlords following a foreclosure because their risk management practices do not allow it.

Cohen countered that there’s “no legal requirement that [Deutsche Bank] gets rid of tenants.” She said the fact that peoples’ lives are affected should be taken into account in policymaking and when lenders make foreclosure-related decisions.

Gehret said DND has attempted to negotiate on tenants’ behalf with Deutsche Bank counsel in Housing Court, with little success.

A greater percentage of subprime adjustable-rate mortgages entered the foreclosure process in New England than nationwide in 2007, according to data presented by Reade of the Federal Reserve Bank. Foreclosure proceedings were initiated on approximately 3.6 percent of those higher risk loans nationwide in the first two quarters of this year. A greater percentage of such loans resulted in foreclosure in every New England state except New Hampshire. Rhode Island showed the greatest differential, with approximately 5.5 percent of subprime ARM loans there facing initial foreclosure proceedings in the first half of this year. In the Bay State, 4.7 percent of subprime adjustable-rate mortgage borrowers fell behind on payment. In New Hampshire, however, the number was 3.4 percent, lower than the national average.

Thomas Callahan, executive director of the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance, said one reason more adjustable-rate subprime mortgage borrowers are experiencing difficulties in the region than nationally is because home prices rose faster in New England than in the rest of the country but now are falling faster.

Selling a home is probably the “No. 1 way” people avoid foreclosure, Callahan said, but having the home’s value drop to below what a borrower paid makes it harder to escape foreclosure that way.