Lenders’ moratorium on taking legal action against homeowners in default has only postponed the inevitable, today’s foreclosure figures show.

A month after Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae ended the government-ordered freeze, U.S. foreclosure activity in April jumped 32 percent from a year ago to a record high of 342,038 properties, RealtyTrac said today.
 
"It looks like the dam burst in March and continued in April," Rick Sharga, senior vice president at RealtyTrac in Irvine, Calif., told Reuters.
 
One in every 374 households with mortgages got a foreclosure filing in April, the highest monthly rate since RealtyTrac began tracking it in January 2005. Most of April's filings, which included notices of default and sheriff’s auctions, were in the early stages. In states like Michigan, borrowers in default have a grace period to pay off the bank before the lender owns it outright and puts it up for sale as REO (Real Estate Owned.)
 
"It's likely that we'll see a corresponding spike in REOs as these loans move through the foreclosure process over the next few months,” RealtyTrac chief executive James J. Saccacio said in a statement.
 
Meanwhile, national unemployment was at 8.9 percent in April,  its highest rate in more than a quarter century.
 
RealtyTrac, noting a lag of up to six months between unemployment and foreclosure, expects at least three or four months of high foreclosure activity before the wave ebbs. Nationwide, sales of foreclosures and other distressed properties made up about half of the market in the first quarter, the National Association of Realtors reported.
 
The Obama administration in March announced an incentive plan to provide $75 billion for the mortgage industry to modify loans to help up to 9 million borrowers avoid foreclosure. But the relief plan’s potential impact remains unclear.