Foreclosure petitions — the first step in the foreclosure process in Massachusetts — dropped to 2,307 in July, a 20.4 percent decrease from 2,899 in July 2009.

A deed in lieu can also help you avoid having a foreclosure on your credit report, which can severely damage your credit score and make it difficult to get future loans, Sanborn says.

Year-to-date, there have been 6,861 foreclosure deeds filed this year, a 2.5-percent drop from 2011. Meanwhile, Middlesex County saw its completions drop 6.4 percent this year, from 1,031 to 965.

In Middlesex County, however, there were 152 foreclosure deeds, up 8.6 percent from the 140 recorded in August 2007. However, year-to-date foreclosure activity has surged in the state.

The number of foreclosure deeds filed in the first four months of the year was up from 104 in 2011 to 175 this year, according to statistics from The Warren Group, a Boston-based provider of real ...

As for foreclosure deeds, there were 329 in June 2013, down from 754 deeds in June 2012. Chris Reidy can be reached at reidy@globe.com.

Register John L. O’Brien Jr. recently announced that he found 6,047 fraudulent Linda Green documents recorded in the Essex Southern District Registry of Deeds, the Salem-based entity he leads.

Massachusetts foreclosure starts in June rose 99.1 percent when compared with foreclosure starts in June 2013, but last month's number was 14.8 percent lower than the number for May 2014, the ...

Foreclosure deeds, the final step of the foreclosure process, dropped by 54 percent to 298 in July, while foreclosure auction announcements fell by 57 percent to 502.

The number of so-called foreclosure deeds totaled 311 last month, down 14.6 percent from the 364 recorded in February 2014.