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Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. foreclosure filings exceeded 250,000 for the 10th straight month in January as falling prices trapped owners in homes worth less than the mortgage, RealtyTrac Inc. said.

A total of 274,399 properties got a default or auction notice or were seized by banks, the Irvine, California-based seller of default data said in a statement today. It was the 37th straight year-on-year increase in filings.

“This is tough to fix, because so many people are underwater,” Bruce Norris, president of the Norris Group, a Riverside, California-based investment firm specializing in foreclosed properties, said in an interview. “Until debt goes down or prices go up, this is going to be a mess.”

The housing market lost an estimated $3.3 trillion in value last year and almost one in six owners owed more than their homes were worth, online data provider Zillow.com said last week. The U.S. economy shrank 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter, the most since 1982, and payrolls plunged by 598,000 in January, pushing the jobless rate to the highest level since 1992.