The more than 321,000 foreclosure filings in May indicate that the Making Home Affordable Program of the Obama administration has not yet made a significant dent on the problem of large numbers of foreclosed properties for sale in the country.

According to Rick Sharga, a vice president at the California-based real estate research firm RealtyTrac which released the foreclosure filing report, nearly 1 million foreclosure notices were filed in a period of just 3 months. Sharga said this is unprecedented.

The May foreclosure total was the third biggest in RealtyTrac’s foreclosure monitoring history and also marked the third consecutive month that the total surpassed the 300,000 level, which is also the first occurrence in the report’s history.

Sharga added that compared to the previous month of April, the number of foreclosure auctions and delinquencies declined, but the number of bank-owned foreclosed properties for sale increased by 2 percent.

The two-percent increase, according to Sharga, was largely caused by increases in foreclosed houses in Arizona, Michigan, Washington, Oregon, Nevada and New York. He said that his research team expects more bank-owned foreclosed properties for sale in the next months as various foreclosure prevention actions implemented by states reach their expiration dates.

The loan modification and refinancing schemes of the Obama administration obviously have not yet made a big impact on foreclosures. Either the implementation of the program is facing various challenges or unemployment and other recessionary factors are derailing the Obama foreclosure prevention program.

The nationwide unemployment rate has reached the 9.4 percent level in May, the highest level in nearly 26 years. Mortgage rates have also jumped by one percentage point to over 5.5 percent.

Sharga explained that one of the remedies to help solve the housing problem is to increase home buying activities to a level that would exhaust all foreclosed properties for sale. He added that mortgage rates should not be allowed to go up because any increase would further discourage those who are planning to buy homes and who keep postponing their home purchases.

RealtyTrac predicted that approximately 4 million foreclosure actions will be filed this year involving around 3.1 million homeowners with home loans. In 2008, a record total of 3.1 million foreclosure filings were made on approximately 2.4 million housing units.

According to RealtyTrac records, only about 800,000 filings are made on about 550,000 households during a normal year.

Sharga explained that the combined pressure of low prices and high number of foreclosed properties for sale drives more properties into foreclosure.