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It shouldn’t surprise anyone, said one local real estate broker.

Foreclosures will lead to a projected economic loss of $272 million in Lee County, according to a report compiled for the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The Naples-Marco area stands to lose more than $128 million stated the report, released Tuesday as a prelude to the meeting of mayors from across the country in Detroit.

Prepared by forecasting and consulting firm Global Insight, the report said weak residential investment, lower spending and income in the construction industry and curtailed consumer spending because of falling home values will combine to hold back the nation’s economic activity.

“The wave of foreclosures that has rippled across the U.S. has already battered some of our largest financial institutions, created ghost towns of once vibrant neighborhoods — and it’s not over yet,” the report said.

Lee Clerk of Courts Charlie Green said his office handled 1,809 foreclosures in October, up from 1,326 in September. He doesn’t track single-family and homestead numbers. The Board of Realtors does. It tracked just over 1,500 foreclosures in October, Green said, almost 500 of them homesteaded.

“It’s terrible,” he said. “We’re swamped.”

October foreclosures, he said, are up 1,500 percent from a year ago.

“The bottom line is when money is so cheap for a long time like it was bad things happen,” he said. “People who have money chase the points around to try to keep it up. You get these creative mortgages, creative ways to increase return. It doesn’t last.”

Joe Pavich Sr., broker and owner of Realty World Florida in Estero, also pointed to the mismanaged mortgage deals. The 56-year-old also listed property flippers and homeowners who squandered away equity trying to upgrade as reasons for the dismal economic forecast.

“I knew it was coming,” Pavich said.

A resident of Estero for the past 18 years, he’s never seen business across the board as bad as it is here lately.

“The housing market looks like it just affected everything,” Pavich said. “I don’t see car dealers selling a lot of cars. This past weekend I didn’t see the crowds at the malls. I’m not surprised by the trickledown effect.”

The report also projects property values will decline by $1.2 trillion in 2008, due in part to the foreclosure crisis, with drops in home prices across the U.S. averaging 7 percent. And it said the loss of property, sales and real estate transfer taxes will hurt local and state governments.

In Collier County, according to the clerk of courts Web site, at least 97 properties are scheduled for courthouse sales within the next 30 days.

Marco Island City Manager Bill Moss said he knows his community will feel the impact in the coming years. “I think it will have some impact on (Marco Island),” he said. “I think we’ll have some impact, but I’m not in the position to say how significant it will be.”

Moss, who is leaving Marco Island in January for the same position in Naples, said he was aware of the fairly large number of foreclosures in the area. Moss said he did not feel comfortable commenting on the economic impact the market would have on Naples.

A mortgage industry association agreed Tuesday to help the nation’s mayors raise public awareness about ways to avoid falling into foreclosure as part of an effort to address the nation’s housing crisis.

The agreement was announced following a meeting of mayors from across the country in Detroit organized by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The Mortgage Bankers Association also plans to help cities get access to information on homes in foreclosure to ensure those properties don’t blight neighborhoods.

“The foreclosure crisis has the potential to break the backbone of our economy,” Douglas Palmer, mayor of Trenton, N.J., and president of the mayors group, said following the meeting at the MGM Grand Detroit hotel.

The National Forum on Homeownership Preservation and Foreclosures was closed to the media, but mayors said afterward that progress was made. The mayors plan to discuss the housing crisis again at a Conference of Mayors meeting in January.

“Such actions will help to lessen the number of foreclosures thereby avoiding the further negative effects on local housing markets and on the broader economy,” according to the report, titled “The Mortgage Crisis: Economic and Fiscal Implications for Metro Areas.”

The biggest losses in economic activity are projected for some of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. New York is expected to lose $10.4 billion in economic activity in 2008, followed by Los Angeles at $8.3 billion, Dallas and Washington at $4 billion each, and Chicago at $3.9 billion.

The report estimates U.S. gross domestic product growth in 2008 will be 1.9 percent, coming in about $166 billion — or one percentage point — lower as a result of mortgage problems. GDP is the value of goods and services produced and is considered the best barometer of the country’s economic fitness.

The housing market slump has made it harder for financially strapped home buyers to sell their homes and avoid missing payments or losing their homes in foreclosure. Increasingly, many borrowers who took out adjustable-rate mortgages and other loans with monthly payments that increase after an initial period also are finding they can’t afford the higher payments.

Jim Diffley, managing director of Global Insight’s regional services group, wrote the report with his team and was to discuss the forecasts during the mayors’ meeting. He said the goal was to provide a broad look at the effect of foreclosures, a problem mayors are keenly aware of locally.

“This is not a new issue,” Diffley said. “We’ve know about it. It’s been swelling up.”

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Staff writer Jenna Buzzacco and the Associated Press contributed to this story.