Foreclosure filings in California more than tripled last year to 481,392 (a figure that includes default notices, auction sales notices and bank repossessions) involving 249,513 properties, according to Irvine's RealtyTrac.

   Nationally, there were 2,203,295 filings involving 1,285,873 properties in 2007. The number of filings was up 75 percent from 2006, said RealtyTrac, which tracks foreclosures and sells the information to investors and home shoppers.

   In California, 1.9 percent of households entered some stage of foreclosure last year, compared with a national rate of just over 1 percent, according to Realty Trac. 

   Nevada had the highest foreclosure rate in the U.S. in 2007, with 3.4 percent of its households entering some stage of foreclosure during the year, the company said.

   In December, about 2,946 Orange County properties entered some stage of foreclosure, or 0.29 percent of households, RealtyTrac said.

   RealtyTrac has been criticized because it counts each stage of the foreclosure process as a separate event, leading some to say it exaggerates the number of foreclosures by double- or triple-counting some homes. However, the company last year began releasing the number of unique properties involved in the filings, which has quieted criticism in some corners.

   Last week, DataQuick reported that foreclosures spiked in nearly every ZIP code in Orange County in the last three months of 2007 vs. the same period in 2006.