Foreclosures remain a growing problem in Hawai'i, but a survey of troubled mortgages suggests that threatened and actual home losses in Honolulu aren't as severe as they are in most of the country's largest metropolitan areas.

Honolulu, or O'ahu, ranked in the bottom half of the 203 largest U.S. metro areas in terms of the percentage of an area's housing market facing foreclosure in the first half of this year.

The report by California-based real estate research firm RealtyTrac said 0.48 percent of Honolulu homes faced foreclosure between January and June.

That represented one foreclosure for every 207 homes on the island. RealtyTrac ranked Honolulu 143rd out of the 203 areas surveyed.

RealtyTrac said 1,616 Honolulu properties faced foreclosure in the period, up nearly fourfold from 430 properties in the first six months of last year.

Honolulu's most recent rank was just below Appleton, Wis., which had one foreclosure per 205 homes, and just above Amarillo, Texas, which had one foreclosure per 210 homes.

The worst market was Las Vegas-Paradise, Nev., with one foreclosure for every 13 homes, or nearly 7.5 percent of the market.

The best market was Burlington-South Burlington, Vt., where there were a total of 11 foreclosure filings, or one for every 8,066 homes.

The average among all the markets in the study was one foreclosure per 84 homes, or 1.5 million properties representing 1.2 percent of all the homes.

Municipalities in California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona are where most foreclosures are concentrated. Those states accounted for 35 of the 50 highest foreclosure rates among metro areas in the report.

RealtyTrac studied metro areas with populations of at least 200,000. But because the company's data don't exclude commercial property, the report isn't an exact measure of foreclosures in the residential market and probably overstates Honolulu's count because of the sizable number of condotels and timeshare units, many of which have faced foreclosure.

In its report, RealtyTrac counted properties with at least one foreclosure filing in the six-month period. Foreclosure filings include default notices, trustee sale notices and repossession purchases by lenders.

Not every filing results in a foreclosure sale, but RealtyTrac's count gives an idea of how many homeowners are in serious danger of losing their homes.