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Final 2007 foreclosure statistics are in and they're brutal.

More than 8,000 homes in the Northern San Joaquin Valley were repossessed by lenders last year. That's nearly 10 times more than were lost in 2006.

More bad news is to come because notices of default, the first step in the foreclosure process, keep climbing, according to DataQuick Information Systems.

"The hunt continues for signs that we've reached a peak in foreclosure activity," Andrew Le- Page, a DataQuick analyst said Tuesday. He predicted foreclosures will rise further during coming months.

That's because a record number of California homeowners fell behind on mortgage payments during October, November and December, and those homes are more likely to be foreclosed in the coming months.

LePage said the main problem is the drop in home values. With home prices depreciating, an increasing number of homeowners owe more than their property is worth. So owners can't sell their homes for enough to pay off their mortgages.

Foreclosures in Stanislaus, San Joaquin and Merced counties are among the highest in the nation.

"You guys have been slammed," LePage said. "In some pockets of your region, it's about as bad as it gets."

Here's how bad:

Stanislaus County -- 2,563 homes were lost to foreclosure in 2007, an increase of 775 percent from 2006. Notices of default were issued to 6,930 homeowners in 2007, about three times as many as the year before.

San Joaquin County -- 3,977 homes were lost to foreclosure in 2007, an increase of 782 percent. Notices of default were issued to 10,411 homeowners, about three times as many as the year before.

Merced County -- 1,461 homes were lost to foreclosure in 2007, an increase of 1,461 percent. Notices of default were issued to 3,642 homeowners, more than three times as many as the year before.

Tuolumne County -- 69 homes were lost to foreclosure in 2007, an increase of 263 percent. Notices of default were issued to 253 homeowners, nearly double as many as the year before.

California -- 84,375 homes were lost to foreclosure in 2007, a jump of 566 percent. Notices of default were issued to 254,824 homeowners, nearly 2.5 times as many as the year before.

The foreclosure process takes a minimum of four months to work its way through the legal system, with many cases taking a year or more to resolve.

The final foreclosure step is the auctioning off of property on the courthouse steps. More times than not, no one bids in those auctions, so the property ownership is transferred to the mortgage lender.

In California, most of the loans that went into default during the last three months of 2007 origin- ated in August 2005 to October 2006.

Statewide, on primary mort- gages, homeowners were a me- dian five months behind on their payments when their lenders started the default process. Those borrowers owed a median $11,121 on a median $340,000 mortgage.