The number of Hawai'i property foreclosures soared last month, according to a new report, though some observers question the count by real estate research firm RealtyTrac because it includes commercial property.

California-based RealtyTrac said there were 594 Hawai'i foreclosure filings in September, up more than four fold from 135 in the same month last year.

The September figure also was a sharp increase from 336 foreclosure filings in August and 229 in July.

The surge last month dropped Hawai'i far from a previously frequent position among 10 states with the lowest foreclosure rates, to 20th highest in the nation at one foreclosure for every 842 households.

Nationally, there was one foreclosure for every 475 households.

RealtyTrac spokesman Daren Blomquist said Hawai'i's rise in the ranks was at least partly due to new laws taking effect in other states that are delaying actions by lenders pursuing foreclosure against homeowners.

For instance, a law implemented in California early last month requires lenders to contact borrowers at least 30 days before filing a notice of default, typically the first step in foreclosure.

A similar law activated in August in North Carolina requiring a 45-day notice helped reduce default notices in that state by 66 percent in September, RealtyTrac said.

But in Hawai'i, default notices jumped 77 percent to 313 in September. Blomquist said data wasn't immediately available yesterday to indicate whether some special circumstance other than a rush of default notices being filed against homeowners was behind the jump.

CONDOS MAY SKEW NOS.

In August, RealtyTrac clarified after the release of its report that it counted foreclosure actions against multiple hotel-condominium units on Kaua'i owned by developer Brian Anderson, which helped inflate default notices to 177 from what had been around 10 to 30 per month this year before August.

Anderson firm Anekona Development Group also owns close to 200 unsold condotel units at the Ilikai in Waikiki that are the subject of a foreclosure lawsuit filed in August by lender iStar Financial. It wasn't known whether RealtyTrac counted Ilikai condotel units in any month.

RealtyTrac's report purports to count foreclosure filing on "housing units," but Blomquist said it's too difficult to distinguish between residential and commercial property in filings for the company to accurately exclude commercial property such as condotels. Blomquist also said the vast majority of foreclosures counted by RealtyTrac are homes.

A report on National Public Radio earlier this month pointed out that RealtyTrac doesn't count any foreclosures in more than 900 rural counties across the nation, which inaccurately gives states with big rural populations lower rankings.

RealtyTrac said it collects data from more than 2,200 counties nationwide, representing about 90 percent of the U.S. population.

RealtyTrac counts judicial and nonjudicial foreclosures, and includes a range of document filings in its data from default notices to auction notices to repurchases of property by a lender.

NEVADA RATE HIGHEST

The company said it doesn't repeatedly count filings on the same property if more than one foreclosure document is filed against the same property within the time it usually takes to complete a foreclosure.

The worst foreclosure rate measured by RealtyTrac was in Nevada, where there were 13,022 filings, or one for every 82 households.

The best rate was in Vermont, where RealtyTrac counted six filings, or one per 51,593 households.

Hawai'i's foreclosure count of 594 filings was a record for any month since Realtytrac began counting filings in 2006. In September 2006, there were 63 Hawai'i foreclosure filings in RealtyTrac's report.

The average number of foreclosure filings per month in Hawai'i last year was 106. For the first nine months of this year the monthly average is 228, though until July the monthly figure was under that.

During the state's housing slump in the mid-1990s, there were typically 300 to 400 foreclosure cases filed in court per month.

However, the historical comparison is muddied somewhat because most Hawai'i foreclosure cases in recent years occur outside court, which makes cases more difficult to track and results in a more imperfect picture of the problem.

Some local foreclosure attorneys express reservations about the accuracy of RealtyTrac reports, but they say foreclosures are definitely rising as the Hawai'i economy slows and unemployment grows. With modest decreases in property values in many parts of the state and a broad slowdown in home sales, it has become more difficult for owners to sell their homes if they have trouble making mortgage payments.