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Chris Tanner and his wife found their dream home last year, a four-bedroom, 3,100-square-foot house on the Northwest Side with a pool, a postcard view of the Santa Catalina Mountains — and an uncomfortably high mortgage payment of about $3,000 per month.

"I knew if we ever fell behind on this mortgage, then we're done," Tanner said.

They did fall behind, and now Tanner expects to lose his house in a little more than a month to foreclosure. A former account executive for a mortgage lender, he could no longer afford the payments after losing a job last year and struggling to earn equal commissions in other mortgage jobs.

Thousands of Tucson-area homeowners are in similar predicaments. More than 5,000 homes have fallen into foreclosure in the Tucson region during the first nine months of this year, according to foreclosure information service RealtyTrac. That's nearly double the number over the same time last year.

The surge includes homes in virtually every part of town — from lower-income neighborhoods on the South Side to upscale areas near the Catalina Foothills, according to RealtyTrac.

Experts say foreclosures are often triggered by life changes like job losses, divorces or unexpected bills. But this year's increases are also due to the rapid real estate price increases and risky mortgage lending over the past few years, they said.

Many borrowers used risky loans, often with adjustable interest rates, to buy homes they could otherwise not afford, said Marshall Vest, director of the Economic and Business Research Center at the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management.

Some also used risky loans to refinance their mortgages and lower their payments or to cash out equity, said Keith Ernst, senior policy counsel for the North Carolina-based Center for Responsible Lending, an advocacy group that researches predatory lending. Now the real estate market has slowed, and adjustable-rate loan payments are going up, leaving some homeowners trapped, Ernst said.

"What this means for many families is the only option left is foreclosure."

Some experts say many of today's foreclosures are the result of lending activity from within the past two years, when the market hit its peak.

Indeed, many foreclosures this year cluster in places where the most high-risk, high-rate mortgages were made in 2005 and 2006, according to data collected under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.

High-risk, high-rate loans include subprime mortgages, made to borrowers with lower credit scores, and "Alt-A" loans, which often had looser standards than conventional loans. High-risk, high-rate loans were sometimes marketed to people who didn't understand the potential pitfalls, said Cheri Horbacz, program manager for the local Don't Borrow Trouble hot line, a campaign organized by Freddie Mac,

Many of the riskier loans had adjustable rates or "teaser" rates, Ernst said. Often they came with steep prepayment penalties to prevent borrowers from refinancing until after the higher payments set in, he said.

Maria Jimenez, who works for Sun Tran, said she is afraid she will lose her home near West Valencia Road and Interstate 19 because of an increasing payment for an adjustable-rate refinance loan she received about two years ago. The payment is set to rise from about $980 to $1,300 in December.

Meanwhile, her husband, a roofer, has been unable to keep a job because of the slow housing market. Jimenez filed for bankruptcy to help keep foreclosure at bay, but she doesn't think she'll be able to afford the higher payment.

"I still have to pay my lawyers," she said. "It's just really outrageous."

Even bankruptcy may not protect Jimenez. Lenders can foreclose on borrowers in bankruptcy with the court's permission, said University of Arizona law professor Jean Braucher.

Local offices of distressed property buyer HomeVestors are receiving about four times the call volume this year as they were in 2003, said HomeVestors franchisee Fred Hubbard.

Many bought homes or refinanced loans when property values peaked about two years ago and are now upside-down in their loans, owing more than their properties are worth, he said. On top of that, the slowdown in the real estate market has made it hard to sell homes in some areas of town at any price, particularly in areas where sellers are competing with home builders, Hubbard said.

"It's terrible to see parents with tears in their faces, humiliated that they can not secure homes for their families," Hubbard said.

Tanner, the Northwest homeowner, said past rapid appreciation in the market made him feel pressured to buy his current home. He wound up in a bidding war for it, which didn't seem like a problem at the time.

"It became apparent that if you didn't buy a house (then), next year it was going to be $50,000 more," he said.

The areas that showed some of the biggest jumps in foreclosures include the northeastern and southwestern outskirts of the Tucson metro area and Sahuarita — all of which had at least twice as many foreclosures during the first nine months of the year compared with last year, according to RealtyTrac. On the Northwest Side, near Tanner's home, the increase was more than 76 percent.

The neighborhoods with the most foreclosures are often near lower-income areas. Midvale Park, on the South Side, has the most foreclosures of all Tucson neighborhoods with nearly 80 during the first nine months of the year, according to RealtyTrac data.

Midvale Park Neighborhood Association President Joe Miller said the reason might be that Midvale Park was seen as a more desirable place to live than some of the surrounding neighborhoods. Some buyers may have stretched their finances to get in, he said.

"They were probably overly optimistic," he said.

The Don't Borrow Trouble hot line has received calls about foreclosure from a wide range of income groups, Horbacz said.

"The devastation of foreclosure affects everyone," she said.

A rash of foreclosures can be a problem for neighborhoods because they may drag home prices down further in the area, she said.

Tenants might also find themselves without places to live when their landlords end up in foreclosure, she said. The Don't Borrow Trouble hot line is already starting to get calls from tenants in those situations.

Another troublesome effect of the increase in foreclosures is that they may help lengthen the real estate slump, experts said.

Many properties repossessed by lenders will likely end up sitting on the market with an already-high inventory of nearly 10,000 homes, said Hubbard of HomeVestors.

The number of properties in foreclosure across the country also could increase further as more adjustable-rate loans reset, Ernst said. Vest said he expects to see more problems in the future from loans made during 2005 and 2006.

"I think there's still a large pool of these loans that are at risk for going into foreclosure," he said.

Jimenez, the homeowner in bankruptcy, said she is hoping not to be one of those statistics. She's looking for rent-to-own programs or other foreclosure- rescue deals that might allow her to stay in her home. Experts, however, caution homeowners about using foreclosure- rescue services because of potential scams.

"It's just hard to let go," Jimenez said. "And then where will I go?"