The good news: fewer Connecticut homeowners fell behind on their mortgages in the first quarter compared to the prior quarter.

The bad news: the delinquency rate actually climbed from the same period in 2009. That’s according to the Mortgage Banker Association’s most recent delinquency report.

The MBA reported that the delinquency rate for residential mortgage loans in Connecticut in the first quarter was 8.31 percent, down from 9.36 percent in the fourth quarter, but up from 6.81 in the first quarter of 2009.

The seasonally adjusted delinquency rate nationwide rose for every loan type in the first quarter — except for Federal Housing Administration loans, according to the MBA. The delinquency rate for FHA loans actually fell 48 basis points from a year earlier to 13.15 percent.

In fact, American Banker reports that the delinquency rate on single-family mortgages insured by the FHA has actually fallen in each of the last three months.

That’s surprising given the big jump in FHA loans. FHA lending now accounts for 30 percent of all residential mortgages written. That’s up from just 3 percent in 2006.

The foreclosure problem won’t be going away anytime soon. Federal officials said this week that more trial home loan modifications offered to struggling homeowners are being canceled.

The U.S. Treasury said 277,640 trial loan modifications were cancelled in April compared to 155,173 in March. Why?

Mortgage servicers are disqualifying borrowers who have not met the income documentation guidelines or who can’t keep up with the reduced monthly payments under the modified loans.

Apparently, the federal program known as the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, will require homeowners to prove that they have the income to qualify for a mortgage modification starting in June. In the past, mortgage servicers and lenders were taking the word of borrowers that they had a certain income level in order to reduce their mortgage payments.

This comes as Connecticut’s foreclosures spiked in the first quarter. There were 2,166 foreclosures statewide in the first three months of the year, a 54 percent jump from 1,410 during last year’s first quarter, according to The Warren Group.

Connecticut’s housing market got a boost in the first quarter, according to new statistics from The Warren Group.

No where was this more evident than in the upscale communities of Darien, Greenwich and Westport – home to affluent businessmen and all sorts of influential VIPs.

In Greenwich, single-family home sales more than tripled in the first three months compared to a year earlier. A total of 90 single-family homes sold, up from just 29 in the first quarter of 2009, according to stats from The Warren Group.

The median home price dipped, almost 2 percent to about $1.32 million from $1.35 million.

In Westport – once home to Martha Stewart  —  home sales jumped 76.7 percent to 53 from 30 last year. The increased sales didn’t lead to a higher median home price. The median home price tumbled 8.6 percent to $949,900 from almost $.104 million a year earlier.

In contrast, Darien’s median home price surged in the first quarter. The median price for homes sold in the first quarter jumped 39 percent to $1.27 million $912,500 a year earlier. Home sales activity also increased significantly during that timeframe.

There were 37 home sales transactions in Darien in the first quarter, a 68 percent increase from last year.