Foreclosures in metro Atlanta show no sign of abating, according to real estate data tracker Equity Depot.

There are 6,013 properties scheduled for auction June 3, the Alpharetta-based firm said Thursday.

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Last month, Equity Depot reported a record number of foreclosed properties — 7,335. But that covered a five-week period. The latest number is for four weeks. March also was a four-week period, and the number of foreclosures then was 5,685 — almost 6 percent smaller than the number issued Thursday.

For the first five reporting periods of the year, the number of properties scheduled for auction was 32,031, Equity Depot says. That's nearly 46 percent higher than the first five periods of 2007.

"To me it's still trending upward," said Mark Sulimirski, Equity Depot's chief operating officer.

Typically, about half the properties will not be auctioned. Instead, owners will declare bankruptcy, preventing a sale, or come up with the money to keep the property. In other cases, investors will buy properties before they're auctioned.

In many cases, the banks end up owning auctioned properties when the minimum price is not met.

The foreclosures are a symptom of the subprime mortgage crisis, in which easy credit put people in homes they could not afford. When the initially cheap loans reset at higher rates, overextended homeowners defaulted.

Sulimirski said foreclosures began nudging upward in 2006. In the first five periods of that year, 18,806 properties were scheduled for auction; in the last five months, the figure jumped to 19,695.

Then, in the first five periods of 2007, the figure climbed further to 21,954. And from August to December of 2007, it grew to 26,771, Sulimirski said.

Most homeowners are at least a few months behind before a lender initiates a foreclosure, but once the process starts, a house can be sold on the courthouse steps in as few as 37 days. No state has a faster process than Georgia. State law mandates that foreclosure sales be conducted by the first Tuesday of every month.