Hawai'i home foreclosure actions rose for an eighth straight month in January, but the rate of increase shrunk to its smallest level since May, a new report shows.

There were 123 foreclosure filings last month in Hawai'i, a 24 percent increase over 99 filings in January 2007, according to California-based real estate research firm RealtyTrac.

The increase was the smallest since May when filings declined by 1.5 percent. Between June and December, the increases over the same month a year prior had ranged between 53 percent and 414 percent.

Still, last month's increase showed that some Hawai'i homeowners continue to have more trouble maintaining ownership of their property than a year ago.

RealtyTrac said Hawai'i's 123 foreclosure filings translated to less than one-tenth of 1 percent, or 0.025 percent, of local households entering some stage of foreclosure last month, which gave the state one of the lowest rates in the nation as measured by the company.

The RealtyTrac data aren't a precise measure of homeowners losing property to foreclosure because the firm includes a range of document filings in the foreclosure process, from default notices to auction notices and bank repossessions. Because of the methodology, the data may include more than one foreclosure filing on the same property. The data also miss nonjudicial foreclosure notices that aren't recorded publicly, and situations in which homeowners in mortgage default are working with lenders in hopes of avoiding foreclosure action.

Still, few dispute that foreclosures are rising as more 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.

In many Mainland housing markets, declines in home values and decreased buyer demand have prevented troubled owners from refinancing or selling their property. Nationally, foreclosures rose 57 percent to 233,001 last month compared with a year earlier, and equated to 0.19 percent of households.

The country's highest rate was in Nevada, where there were 6,087 foreclosure filings representing 0.6 percent of households.

The lowest rate was in Vermont, where there was one filing.

Hawai'i's foreclosure rate was ninth-lowest among 50 states, compared with seventh-lowest in November and December, as other states improved their position in the survey last month.

Hawai'i 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.

Reach Andrew Gomes at agomes@honoluluadvertiser.com.