Troubling

Foreclosures Top 1 Million

Even modified mortgage holders miss payments.

The number of homes in foreclosure topped one million for the first quarter ever, as delinquencies rose even among prime borrowers and nearly half of all holders of modified mortgages, whose monthly payments had been lowered, defaulted again. The depressing figures, released on Monday by the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, restate the difficulty facing the real-estate market going forward, as continuously high unemployment makes regular mortgage payment difficult for millions of homeowners. Of all mortgages serviced by national banks and thrifts, 87.2 percent were current, while 6.2 percent were seriously delinquent.