Foreclosures accelerated nationwide during the second quarter, with an estimated 1,700 mortgages in Rhode Island falling into foreclosure proceedings, according to a national report released yesterday by the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington.

Rhode Island now ranks sixth highest nationally in foreclosure initiations during April, May and June.

Tumbling house prices, tight credit markets, a bloated inventory of unsold houses and a weak job market continue to hamper the housing market recovery here. Rhode Island’s unemployment rate in July was 7.7 percent.

Nationally, the unemployment rate rose from 5.7 percent to 6.1 percent in August, and the nation lost 84,000 nonfarm payroll jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported yesterday.

Foreclosures nationally accelerated to the fastest pace in almost three decades, as interest rates rose and house values fell, prompting more Americans to walk away from homes they couldn’t refinance or sell.

Nationally, the foreclosure rate during the second quarter was 2.75 percent, according to the Mortgage Bankers. (The rate includes all loans in foreclosure as of June 30.) Rhode Island’s foreclosure rate was 3 percent. Massachusetts’ rate was 2.07 percent.

In Rhode Island, 1.22 percent of the state’s estimated 140,232 home mortgages serviced — roughly 1,700 mortgages — began the process of foreclosure in April, May and June, according to the Mortgage Bankers survey. (The data is provided to the MBA by 85 percent of the nation’s mortgage lenders, banks, thrifts, credit unions and other financial companies.)

Rhode Island was one of eight states where the rate of houses entering foreclosure during the second quarter climbed above the national seasonally adjusted average rate of 1.19 percent, according to the report. It marked the first time in the survey’s 20 years that new foreclosures had risen above 1 percent.

The seven other states with higher-than-average foreclosure starts during the quarter were Nevada, Florida, California, Arizona, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. Nevada had the highest rate, at 2.24 percent

In Massachusetts, by contrast, foreclosure initiations during the second quarter were 0.51 percent, less than half the national average rate. Massachusetts is one of several states — including Texas and Maryland — where the pace of foreclosures slowed, the report said.

In Rhode Island, foreclosure initiations rose steadily from early 2006 through the end of last year, and then began to taper off during the first quarter of this year before picking up again during the second quarter. The rate of increase in foreclosure initiations during the second quarter, though, was still less, on average, than during the last two years, Jay Brinkmann, the Mortgage Bankers’ chief economist and senior vice president for research and economics, said in an e-mail.

The rise in new foreclosures nationwide is being driven mainly by overbuilding in California and Florida; the two states accounted for 39 percent of all foreclosures in the country started during April, May and June and 73 percent of the increase from the first three months of this year, the report said.

“We’re unlikely to see a national turnaround until we see a turnaround in the two largest states, California and Florida,” Brinkmann said during a media conference call.

Despite the weak economy, foreclosure initiations in some states, including Massachusetts, have slowed.

“Massachusetts saw a big improvement last year,” Brinkmann said during the call. “States like Texas are getting better. Even Michigan has gone three quarters with no increase,” suggesting that in some parts of the country “the problems have begun to bottom out.”

But others in the industry worry that the next wave of problems could come from adjustable-rate mortgages, which are scheduled to reset at higher interest rates.

Nationally, 1.8 million adjustable-rate mortgages, or ARMs, are scheduled to reset during the next 12 months, the vast majority of them subprime mortgages, according to First American Core Logic’s Loan Performance, a mortgage data research firm in San Francisco.

In Rhode Island, almost a third of all subprime loans — 32 in 100 loans — were two or more payments delinquent as of May, according to Loan Performance. The national average was 27 percent. LEADING STATES

Foreclosure starts,

second quarter ’08

SOURCE: Mortgage Bankers Association

larditi@projo.com