Hawai'i home foreclosure filings rose 26 percent in May to 162 from 129 a year earlier, the smallest year-over-year increase since a 24 percent rise in January, according to a new report from RealtyTrac.

The rise last month was a fraction of the 218 percent surge in April that pushed local foreclosure filings past 200 for the first time in recent years and pushed Hawai'i's foreclosure rate higher than 14 other states.

At one foreclosure filing per 3,087 households, Hawai'i's foreclosure rate in May was higher than only eight other states, while the 26 percent rise was about half the rate of increase for the nation on average.

Nationally, foreclosure filings rose 48 percent to 261,255, or one per 483 households.

Foreclosure filings in Hawai'i began a steady rise last year, as tracked by the California-based real estate research firm, but are still at a fairly moderate level compared with the state's housing slump in the mid-1990s when there were 300 to 400 foreclosures per month as measured by foreclosure lawsuits filed.

However, RealtyTrac's count is a somewhat imprecise measure of homes threatened by foreclosure because the company counts a range of document filings, from default notices to auction notices that often can include more than one filing on the same property.

RealtyTrac's data does include sale notices of nonjudicial foreclosures, a method of foreclosure outside the court system that has become the predominant type of foreclosure in Hawai'i, accounting for as much as 90 percent of all foreclosure cases by some estimates.

Local foreclosure attorneys say the rise in Hawai'i foreclosure cases isn't alarming.

Helping the local market avoid a more serious deluge of foreclosures are mostly stable home prices, relatively low unemployment, rising personal income and an economy that is still growing, albeit only slightly. Constrained land supply also prevented developers here from oversaturating the market with unsold new homes.

Job losses, divorce and health problems are the most typical causes of financial difficulty that lead to foreclosure, though consumers are now also losing homes after mortgage interest rates reset at dramatically higher rates on exotic loans that were heavily marketed to subprime borrowers over the past several years.

Local lenders say Hawai'i borrowers generally were more conservative and didn't take out as many of the riskier loans that many of their Mainland counterparts did.

In markets hard hit by foreclosures, plummeting home values, a glut of inventory and weak buyer demand have prevented troubled owners from refinancing or selling their property. In some extreme cases, foreclosure waves have eroded property tax bases and placed municipal budgets in peril.

Nevada had the highest foreclosure rate at one for every 118 households, or a total of 9,009, RealtyTrac said. The next highest rate was in California where there were 71,930 filings, or one for every 183 households. Other states in the worst 10 foreclosure markets were Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio and New Jersey.

The lowest foreclosure rate counted by RealtyTrac was in Vermont, where there were three filings, or one for every 103,186 households.