For a while it seemed like foreclosure activity was starting to moderate in Massachusetts. But today’s report from The Warren Group shows a spike in the number of foreclosures started and completed in March.

And a recent news story in Banker & Tradesman about homeowners with second loans, or second liens, points to even more trouble ahead. 

Colleen M. Sullivan reports in this week’s Banker & Tradesman that almost 70 percent of Bay State homeowners who purchased a home between 2003 and 2007 with some kind of second loan are now underwater.

That translates to about 71,000 homeowners throughout the state who owe more on their homes than they are currently worth.  Are all of these homeowners in danger of defaulting on their loans and therefore at risk of foreclosure? No.

But those homeowners are more likely to face foreclosure if they lose a job or their income is reduced and they can’t make mortgage payments. They won’t be able to sell their home at a price to pay their lender off.

And as the story points out, those homeowners with second liens will have a harder time trying to negotiate a short sale - - a deal in which the lender agrees to a home sale in which the price is less than is owed. 

It’s something that industry watchers and foreclosure prevention specialists are surely paying attention to.

A total of 23,324 homeowners in Massachusetts have participated in the federal government’s home loan modification program.

Less than a quarter of those homeowners – 5,635 – have been able to secure permanent mortgage loan modifications. Those statistics were provided this week by the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Program.

HUD has been releasing monthly updates on activity under the Home Affordable Modification Program, better known as HAMP.

The program, launched more than a year ago, has been criticized for not doing enough fast enough. But for the more than 5,000 homeowners who’ve had their mortgage terms permanently adjusted, I’m sure it’s provided some relief.

In Massachusetts, more than 9,000 homeowners lost their homes to foreclosure last year. In the first two months of this year there have been 2,058 foreclosures, and another 3,996 have received foreclosure notices in the mail, according to The Warren Group.

I was  bit surprised to find that the Boston metro area, a large area that includes parts of New Hampshire, is among the metro areas with the most home loan modifications. As of the end of March, there were 12,490 active trials in the Boston metro area and more than 4,000 permanent modifications, which makes up 1.6 percent of all HAMP activity nationwide.

Some in the mortgage and real estate industries say that conditions are improving for homebuyers who need so-called jumbo loans.

In Greater Boston, jumbo loans are those that exceed $523,750. The New York Times recently had a story quoting real estate and mortgage brokers who have seen a spike in jumbo loan activity because it’s getting easier for homebuyers to qualify and interest rates have dipped.

That could be good news for the Bay State’s high-end housing market. Already, I’ve been hearing whispers from local real estate agents saying that million-dollar-plus properties are moving at a quicker pace than they did. One reason could be that the jumbo loan market isn’t as tight as it was.

A total 154 single-family homes priced $1 million or higher were sold in the first two months of the year, which is up from 111 during the same period in 2009, according to statistics from The Warren Group.

Still, this year’s sale volume is 40 percent below the 257 homes that traded in that price range in January and February of 2005.