The nation's mortgage companies modified a record 192,034 loans last month, setting up repayment plans or changing terms to avert foreclosure, an industry survey showed.

The Hope Now Alliance, a coalition of servicers, counselors and investors, aided almost 2.07 million homeowners, an average of more than 159,000 a month, to keep their houses since July 2007, the Washington-based group said yesterday.

"I expect the pace of foreclosure prevention to continue to accelerate," Faith Schwartz, Hope Now's executive director, said in a conference call with reporters.

The group, formed in October at the urging of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, has accelerated foreclosure prevention efforts as lawmakers including House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank and regulators such as Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair say not enough is being done to help homeowners.

Workouts completed in July rose by 11,000 from June, the group said. The total covers repayment plans, agreements to defer or reschedule payments to let the borrower catch up, and loan modifications, which include reducing interest rates or forgiving a portion of the balance, the group said.

Ms. Schwartz said the group didn't have data on how many modified loans become delinquent.

U.S. banks repossessed almost three times as many U.S. homes in July as a year earlier and the number of properties at risk of foreclosure jumped 55 percent, California-based RealtyTrac Inc. said in an Aug. 14 report.

The Office of Thrift Supervision, the regulator of savings and loans, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the regulator of national banks, will report next month on efforts by lenders in the second quarter to modify mortgages for struggling borrowers, OTS Director John Reich said.