Home Foreclosures Continued to Soar in April (Reuters)

 U.S. home foreclosure filings in April rose 4 percent from March and were a whopping 65 percent higher than a year earlier, real estate data firm RealtyTrac said on Wednesday.

Home foreclosure filings in April totaled 243,353, up 4 percent from March, RealtyTrac, an online market of foreclosure properties, said in its U.S. Foreclosure Market Report.

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The figure is a total of default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions.

"The total number of U.S. properties with foreclosure activity in April was the highest monthly total we've seen since we began issuing the report in January 2005," James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac, said in a statement.

In March, home foreclosure filings had risen 5 percent from February.

The surge in foreclosures indicates an increasing number of homeowners are struggling to make mortgage payments amid the worst U.S. housing market downturn since the Great Depression.

RealtyTrac, based in Irvine, California, said the national foreclosure rate in April was one foreclosure filing for every 519 U.S. households.

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