Hawai'i home foreclosure actions are still running about double what they were a year ago, though the state last month improved in a national ranking.

There were 120 Hawai'i foreclosure-related filings in March, up 85 percent from 65 filings in the same month last year, according to California-based real estate research firm RealtyTrac.

The filings amounted to one for every 4,167 households, which gave Hawai'i the sixth-lowest foreclosure rate by state. The ranking was an improvement from February when Hawai'i had the eighth-lowest foreclosure rate.

Nationally, there was one foreclosure action per 538 households, or a total of 234,685 that represented a 57 percent increase over March 2007.

However, local foreclosure attorneys say RealtyTrac's statistics should be taken as a rough measure because the firm's data may miss many notices of nonjudicial foreclosures, which are very popular in Hawai'i with lenders and often don't produce public records except for auction notices.

RealtyTrac data also includes a range of document filings in the foreclosure process, from default notices to auction notices and bank repossessions. So the data may include more than one foreclosure filing on the same property.

Still, most observers agree that home foreclosures in Hawai'i are at much lower levels than most Mainland housing markets.

Many consumers face higher mortgage payments from interest rates resetting at dramatically higher rates on exotic loans that were heavily marketed to subprime borrowers over the past several years.

Hawai'i's housing market broadly has maintained relatively low foreclosures thanks to mostly stable home prices, a strong economy, low unemployment and rising personal income. Local lenders also say borrowers generally were more conservative and didn't take out as many of the riskier loans as in some Mainland markets.

In many Mainland markets, declines in home values and buyer demand have prevented troubled owners from refinancing or selling their property.

According to RealtyTrac's count, a consistent surge in Hawai'i foreclosure actions began in June 2007. Between June and March, the increases over the same month a year prior ranged between 24 percent and 414 percent.

Still, the rate of foreclosure filings is well below the 300 to 400 monthly foreclosures seen in Hawai'i during the mid-1990s housing slump.

The highest foreclosure rate measured by RealtyTrac was in Nevada, where there were 7,659 filings, or one for every 139 households. The lowest rate was in Vermont, where two filings represented a rate of one for every 154,779 households.