Maricopa County is Arizona’s most populated county in the entire state with an estimated population of nearly four million residents. You’d expect a county of that size to see some foreclosures during this housing crisis and since we are talking about Arizona, we know there are more than a few. But recent numbers from Default Research shows home foreclosures continue to rise in a county that has nearly half the state’s population.

The Pennsylvania Company, which tracks pre-foreclosure listings in Arizona and four other states, reported that listings in Maricopa County increased more than 29 percent from March of 2008 to March of 2009. The raw numbers saw an increase from 4,165 in March of last year to 5,887 in March of this year.

Then it gets even more interesting if we break down the cities within the county. Obviously most people would guess that Phoenix, with a population of more than 1.5 million, would lead the county in foreclosure fillings and they did with 2,196 in March. After that it gets much more even but Mesa still secured the second spot with 522 filings followed by Glendale with 435, Gilbert with 341 and Peoria rounding out the top five with 303.

In addition to this local county foreclosure data, RealtyTrac also released state foreclosure  numbers recently that positioned Arizona second in the nation in the number of homes going into foreclosure in the first quarter of 2009. Only Nevada had more.

Another amazing fact coming from RealtyTrac shows the top 5 states with the most foreclosures including the previously mentioned Arizona, Nevada as well as California, Florida and Illinois make up almost 60 percent of the nation’s foreclosure activity during Q1 of 2009.

For more information on Mesa foreclosures, click here.