If you think the torrent of foreclosures affecting every city and nearly every neighborhood and street in South Florida is as bad as it can get, here is a harsh new reality:

There's a new wave of foreclosures making its way through the courts that has nothing to do with exotic subprime loans, real-estate flippers out to make a quick buck or people who bought way more house than they could afford.

Now, double-digit unemployment, sagging home prices and a lingering recession are to blame.

``The second tsunami of foreclosures is coming,'' said Miami Beach-based John Tur, who teaches people how to invest in real estate.

The numbers already are staggering.

During the second quarter of the year, nearly one in four Florida home loans were past due or in foreclosure, making Florida the most delinquent state in the nation, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

This could delay a serious recovery in Florida, because a market with many foreclosures tends to drive down housing prices.

Within Florida, First American CoreLogic reports that Miami-Dade County had the second highest foreclosure rate in August, after California's Osceola County. Broward was sixth.

And foreclosure tracking firm RealtyTrac found that Homestead -- the epicenter of the boom just two years ago -- had the highest rate of new foreclosure filings in the county.

And it could get worse.

New foreclosure filings in Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe counties are on pace to top 120,000 this year. Court clerks say filings could even go as high as 135,000. That's 17,000 to 32,000 more filings than last year.

THE REALITY

Those statistics are played out daily in neighborhoods such as Malibu Bay, a gated community in Homestead where property values have plummeted. A two-bedroom, two-bath home that sold for $242,000 in August 2006, for example, is now listed for $70,000, said Karen Klores, a Realtor at The Keyes Company.

Malibu Bay is a quiet, well-manicured community of sand-colored homes with no foreclosure signs in sight. But as in many South Florida neighborhoods, that serene picture masks secrets: In a 200-yard stretch of Northeast 11th Drive in the Ventura section of Malibu Bay, 14 out of 48 townhomes are in some stage of foreclosure.

Although the grass is kept trimmed by the homeowners association, many of the homes are shuttered and empty, with padlocks on the doors.

Leslee Ramos doesn't often visit her three-bedroom townhome in Malibu Bay, which was built by Lennar Corp. during the housing boom, but she checked in last week.

Ramos moved to Northeast 11th Drive in October 2006, paying $255,490. The home is now worth $121,800, according to property records.

After losing her job about two years ago, she started eating into her savings to make payments but still couldn't afford the mortgage. Her home went into foreclosure earlier this year, and in May she moved back to Kendall to live with her mother.

Now Ramos' house is empty, and she expects the bank to sell it in February.

``It feels horrible to go through foreclosure,'' said Ramos, who now does marketing for a nursing home. ``I can't apply for anything. I have no credit.''

It isn't just suburban subdivisions feeling the impact of foreclosures. Condominium foreclosures are also on the rise. In early 2008, single-family-home foreclosures outpaced condos by about three to one. But now condos make up 41 percent of the residential foreclosures in Miami-Dade, 67 percent in Broward and a whopping 83 percent in the Florida Keys, according to RealtyTrac.

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