For an economy that already looks to be teetering on the edge of recession, this is not at all an encouraging economic sign:

May foreclosure-related filings, which include default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions, were up 7% from April and up 14% from a year ago, to 35,196 properties, according to the real estate data group ATTOM.

Now, on the one hand, those numbers aren't catastrophic, not yet. In 2009, for instance, there were very nearly 3,000,000 foreclosures in the U.S. at the height of the financial crisis and housing collapse. So we're obviously nowhere near that level of disaster yet.

Still, you never want to see those figures creeping up in any way. Florida, California and Texas led the pack for most foreclosures, with Illinois and New York also posting notably high numbers.

Rob Barber, ATTOM's CEO, said the numbers suggest "the possibility of continued heightened activity" in the months ahead.

Credit rating firm Fitch, meanwhile, claimed the spike represents "a 'normalization' process after a pandemic period when many consumers benefited from loan forbearances and government assistance."

Let's hope we're looking more at the latter and not the former.