Foreclosures soar despite efforts to help

The magnitude of home foreclosures appears to be overwhelming the efforts of lenders to help distressed borrowers keep their homes.

To help stem the wave of foreclosures, some lenders have been easing the terms of loans, helping owners refinance or even letting homes be sold for less than the value of the mortgage -- called a "short sale." But so far, those efforts have had only modest success.

The latest evidence was a report Thursday from RealtyTrac, which said banks last month repossessed nearly three times the number of homes that they did in July 2007. One in every 464 households received a foreclosure filing last month. Some experts say the epidemic has yet to crest.

"From July to December -- that will be the peak of the foreclosures," says Susan Wachter, a real estate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. "Assuming there's no increase in interest ...