Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. foreclosure filings climbed to a record in the third quarter as lenders seized more properties from delinquent borrowers, according to RealtyTrac Inc.

A total of 937,840 homes received a default or auction notice or were repossessed by banks, a 23 percent increase from a year earlier, the Irvine, California-based seller of default data said today in a report. One out of every 136 U.S. households received a filing, the highest quarterly rate in records dating to January 2005.

“The problem is prime loans going into foreclosure and people being underwater and losing their jobs,” Richard Green, director of the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, said in an interview. “It’s a really bad number.”

Mounting foreclosures mean U.S. home prices probably will resume falling, analysts from Amherst Securities Group LP in New York said Sept. 23. A “shadow inventory” of 7 million properties are in the foreclosure process or likely to be seized, up from 1.27 million in 2005, they said.

The pace of prime and so-called alt-A loan defaults is accelerating as subprime defaults slow, Standard & Poor’s analysts led by Diane Westerback said yesterday in a report. Prime loans are those made to borrowers with the best credit records while alt-A loans are considered riskier because they were often granted without documenting the borrower’s income.

Securities Losses

More than $400 billion in U.S. home mortgages that were packaged into securities and sold by companies other than government-supported Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are in default and may be foreclosed on, S&P said. Those defaults may depress home prices for years, the analysts said.

The delinquency rate for prime loans rose to 6.41 percent in the second quarter from 6.06 percent, the Washington-based Mortgage Bankers Association said Aug. 20. The share of prime loans in foreclosure increased to 3 percent from 2.49 percent, the MBA said.

“The number of people who can’t pay their mortgages, we haven’t seen the peak of that,” David Lowman, head of JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s mortgage unit, said this week. “That’s going to weigh on us for some time to come.”

Home foreclosures will climb through late 2010, peaking after the unemployment rate reaches 10.2 percent in the second quarter, the mortgage bankers said in an Oct. 13 forecast.

RealtyTrac reported that 343,638 properties received foreclosure filings in September alone, the third-highest monthly total behind July and August of this year. The September number fell 4 percent from the previous month, though it climbed 29 percent from a year earlier.

Few Exceptions

Bank seizures rose 21 percent from the previous quarter and increased in every state except two and the District of Columbia, RealtyTrac said.

Nevada had the highest foreclosure rate: one in every 23 households, or almost six times the national average. A total of 47,925 Nevada homes got filings, up 10 percent from the previous quarter and 59 percent from a year earlier, RealtyTrac said.

In both Arizona and California, one in 53 households received filings. They were followed by Florida, at one in 56, and Idaho, at one in 97. Utah, Georgia, Michigan, Colorado and Illinois rounded out the top 10 highest rates.

New Jersey had the 15th highest rate. Connecticut was 25th and New York was 39th.

Six states accounted for more than 60 percent of total filings in the U.S., led by California’s 250,054. Filings in the most populous state rose 19 percent from the third quarter of 2008. Bank seizures jumped 12 percent from the previous quarter.

Florida Repossessions

Florida had the next highest total, with 156,924 filings, up 23 percent from a year earlier. Bank seizures rose 16 percent from the previous quarter.

Arizona had 50,342 filings, up 25 percent from the same period a year earlier. Nevada had 47,925, up 59 percent. Illinois had 37,270, a gain of 30 percent; and Michigan had 37,026, an increase of 22 percent.

Georgia, Texas, Ohio and New Jersey rounded out the top 10 states with the most filings, RealtyTrac said.

The company collects data from more than 2,200 counties representing 90 percent of the U.S. population.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dan Levy in San Francisco at dlevy13@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 15, 2009 00:00 EDT