It's hard to say we had a "good" month for foreclosures, but while foreclosure filings in the state as a whole surged 14 percent from January to February, the Tampa Bay region's caseload dropped 6.3 percent.

Pinellas, Pasco, Hillsborough and Hernando counties reported 5,828 foreclosure filings in February vs. 6,222 in January, according to the firm RealtyTrac. Across the country, foreclosures were up 6 percent month to month.

The local improvement was a bit surprising considering Gov. Charlie Crist's voluntary foreclosure moratorium expired at the end of January. Many had predicted a compensatory surge of filings in February.

The depth of the mortgage default crisis depended on the county. Pinellas, where new home sales were the slightest during the housing boom, reported a foreclosure rate of 1 for every 353 households. Hills­borough County came off the hardest hit at one in every 178 households.

Despite the one-month improvement, foreclosures will not disappear as a problem. The effect of joblessness on foreclosures has yet to be fully felt, said George Werner, a Clearwater foreclosure lawyer.

Today's distressed properties are mostly a product of questionable purchases made during the housing boom that ended in 2006.

"What we're seeing now is mostly from poor people and leveraged-up investors," Werner said.

The worst-afflicted part of the state for foreclosures remains Cape Coral-Fort Myers. One in every 65 households was so distressed, the second-worst rate in the nation. The top spot for foreclosures was Las Vegas.

Previous reports counted multiple foreclosure filings for a single property. RealtyTrac now counts each property only once.