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One in 465 homes in the Houston area received a foreclosure filing in March, according to a new report from RealtyTrac Inc.

That’s 53 percent higher than the number of filings in March 2009, and 29 percent higher than the number of filings in February of this year, according to RealtyTrac’s U.S. Foreclosure Market Report.

RealtyTrac is an Irvine, Calif.-based private marketer of foreclosure properties.

In Texas as a whole, 1 in 617 homes received a foreclosure filing and the nation as a whole saw 1 in 352 filings.

Foreclosure filings were reported on 367,056 properties in March, an increase of nearly 19 percent from the previous month, an increase of nearly 8 percent from March 2009 and the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began issuing its report in January 2005.

“Foreclosure activity in the first quarter of 2010 followed a very similar pattern to what we saw in the first quarter of 2009: A shallow trough in January and February followed by a substantial spike in March,” said James Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac.

“One difference, however, is that the increases were more tilted toward the final stage of foreclosure, with REOs (bank repossessions) increasing 9 percent on a quarterly basis in the first quarter of 2010 compared to a 13 percent quarterly decrease in REOs in the first quarter of 2009.”

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