Home foreclosures are on the rise in Lancaster County, but a local Realtor believes the area is still on better footing than many other regions that have been hard hit by the ongoing economic woes.

"I don't think we have anywhere near the same magnitude of problem as other places in the country," said Karol Symanowicz, a Realtor with Prudential Homesale Services Group.

"The whole market is improving. It's been improving since mid-January, especially compared to the second half of last year."

RealtyTrac, which tracks foreclosures nationwide, issued a report Wednesday showing that the number of foreclosures here had more than tripled since this time last year.

"It's easy to triple a small number and still not have it be that big," he said.

Looking at the first-quarter report for 2009, Lancaster County ranked 157th in the nation — and ninth in the state — for foreclosures per housing unit.

The county filed 347 foreclosures during that three-month period, or one residential property for every 559. There were 103 foreclosures in the county during the same period in 2008.

"I don't see it as all that significant, compared to Las Vegas, where it's one in 87 and Florida, where it's one in 150, or something like that," Symanowicz said.

"It's still a fairly insignificant number … although, to those 347 homeowners, it's pretty significant."

Nationally, there were 803,489 foreclosures filed in the first quarter, or one for every 159 housing units.

The highest foreclosure rates occurred mostly in California, Florida, Arizona and Nevada. Areas in Pennsylvania hit harder than Lancaster include Youngstown, Reading, Pittsburgh and the York-Hanover and Allentown-Bethlehem regions.

The RealtyTrac site shows there were 106 new foreclosures in Lancaster County in March — or one for every 1,828 housing properties.

Also in March, there were 1,188 new foreclosures in Philadelphia; 790 in Allegheny County; 362 in Bucks County; and 221 in York County. Lancaster County is 13th on the list of new foreclosures in the state.

More than 1,100 preliminary foreclosure notices were filed with the Lancaster County Prothonotary's Office in 2008 — a record, up from 885 in 2007 — according to newspaper records.

But Symanowicz cited a report in November by Kiplinger.com, a national business forecasting organization, that the county was one of six real estate "safe havens" across the country, places that stand out because of their stable home values, comparatively low foreclosure rates and housing affordability.

"Lancaster County is probably the best place in the whole country, No. 1, to sit out a recession," Symanowicz said.

Local business and real estate leaders said then the report reinforces what they already knew: that Lancaster County's varied economy is a major strong point and the conservative lending practices of its banks and mortgage companies have kept foreclosures well below the national average.

Symanowicz noted that the market for home sales and the foreclosure rate aren't directly related.

"Foreclosures have more to do with the economy of those individuals," he said.

"But it's not a real big problem here. It is more than it was, but with the number of home sales that happen in Lancaster County every month, the number of foreclosures is very small."

To learn about two new state programs designed to help homeowners avoid foreclosure, visit Pennsylvania's "Here to Help" Web site at www.heretohelp.pa.gov.

E-mail: tknapp@lnpnews.com