Nearly 10,000 residential units will be sold off in court-supervised foreclosure home auctions in 13 counties in the Atlanta region in September, according to an Alpharetta-based real estate firm.

The number of residential properties to be auctioned off this month is the third highest in the history of the Atlanta metro area. In 2008, the number of foreclosed homes for auctions never exceeded the 8,000 level. This year, all monthly totals surpassed 8,000 except one.

In August, the highest number of foreclosure filings occurred in Gwinnett County, with a total of 2,120. Fulton County had 1,929 filings; DeKalb County posted 1,571; Cobb County had 1,107 filings; and Clayton County posted 785.

To help stop the increasing number of foreclosures, Reverend Jesse Jackson and the members of his Rainbow PUSH Coalition carried out a protest prayer vigil at the Federal Reserve Bank in downtown Atlanta. They particularly denounced the foreclosure sales held by courts across the Atlanta metro area.

Jackson cited the billions of money given by taxpayers to big banks and expressed frustration at the failure of these banks to help these taxpayers during difficult times.

In July, Georgia ranked seventh in a chart of foreclosure filings provided by a real estate research firm. With one household out of 356 households notified with default or foreclosure, Georgia posted more than 11,000 foreclosures in July. More than 3,500 of these were already repossessed by banks while more than 7,600 were already posted for trustee sales.

Meanwhile, in a chart of 203 metro areas surveyed across the U.S., the metro area covered by Atlanta, Marietta and Sandy Springs was 35th based on foreclosure rate in the first 6 months of this year. More than 2 percent of all households in the metro area were in the foreclosure process, putting a total of 42,799 housing units in danger of actual foreclosures.

With one in 49 homeowners in the Atlanta area notified with delinquency or foreclosure in the first half of this year, the foreclosure rate of the area increased by nearly 11 percent from the rate in the previous quarter of July to December 2008 and nearly 11.5 percent from the rate in the same 6-month period in 2008.

According to Jackson, he and his group will continue to campaign against bank foreclosures. His group planned to meet with pastors nationwide to plan a strategy against foreclosures, starting with the Rainbow PUSH Coalition regional conference in Atlanta in October.