"Subprime ARM foreclosure starts dropped in 43 states," Brinkmann said. "However, the foreclosure rate for prime fixed-rate loans increased in 41."
In Maryland, lenders surveyed by the trade group began foreclosure proceedings on more than 4,100 homeowners with fixed-rate prime loans during the spring - from April through June. That compares with about 2,900 in the winter and 1,200 in the spring of 2008.
All told, 12.4 percent of borrowers in the state - prime, subprime, FHA and VA - were behind on their mortgages in the spring. That's the highest on record for a survey that has Maryland data back to 1979.
Delinquencies are up from 11.3 percent in the winter and 7.8 percent in the spring of last year, the mortgage bankers said.
The state, which is urging homeowners to get in touch with a nonprofit foreclosure-prevention counselor at the first sign of trouble, said it is getting an average of 300 calls a week to its foreclosure-help hot line, 877-462-7555. The recession has hurt homeowners' ability to pay even if they haven't lost a full-time job.
"Many homeowners were in recent years approved for their loans on the basis of overtime pay or a second job," Skinner said. "In this economy, a lot of that has gone away."
He said the federal Making Home Affordable program, which aims to lower eligible borrowers' payments to 31 percent of their monthly gross income, has been slow getting off the ground but "has a lot of potential" to help people who are making less.
But for someone out of work, loan-modification programs don't do much good.
"Ultimately, we need people to have jobs again," said Joanna Smith-Ramani, co-chairwoman of the Baltimore Homeownership Preservation Coalition, a collection of organizations working to decrease foreclosures. "There's only so much you can do to Band-Aid it or patchwork it between now and then. If people don't have income, they can't meet a modification payment, either."
That usually leaves just one option: moving out.
Here, too, the economy has thrown up roadblocks. If you can't afford your home in a normal market, you can sell and walk away, possibly with thousands of dollars in your pocket. But because so many people bought or borrowed against their equity at the height of the real estate bubble, about 29 percent of Maryland borrowers owed more on their homes in June than those homes were worth, according to estimates from real estate information company First American CoreLogic.
