More than 925,000 foreclosure filings were reported on more than 573,000 properties in the first half of 2007, according to the RealtyTrac Midyear 2007 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, released yesterday. The report marks the first time that RealtyTrac has included a count of unique property addresses in some stage of foreclosure. But whether you count by total foreclosure filings or number of properties affected by foreclosure, foreclosure activity is up more than 55 percent from the first half of 2006.

“The addition of this (property count) metric to our foreclosure report was spurred by a data request for unique property addresses from the Federal Reserve Bank, which is using our data for market and risk analysis, and we believe it will serve as a valuable complement to the total foreclosure filing count that we have been including all along,” said Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac’s vice president of marketing. “It’s interesting to note that the total foreclosure filings and unique property counts reveal almost identical trends on the national level: foreclosure filings are up 39 percent from the previous six months and 56 percent from the first half of 2006; unique property counts are up 32 percent from the previous six months and up 58 percent from the first half of 2006.”

The similarity between the trends revealed by the two different counts did not end at the state level. Both counts showed the same six states — Nevada, Colorado, California, Michigan, Florida and Ohio — with the highest per household foreclosure activity. And the same five states — California, Florida, Texas, Ohio and Michigan — documented both the highest number of foreclosure filings and the highest number of unique properties in some stage of foreclosure.

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