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The townhouse on Brookmead Court in Upper Marlboro wasn't exactly a dream home but it was a place for Lisa Wiles and her husband, Edward, to raise their three children.

Then, in July, she had to go on medical leave from her job with the postal service. The hospital bills started piling up. About a month ago, her mortgage lender told her she was in danger of foreclosure.

"I'm not feeling good at all," she said. "Devastated, even. I worked hard for my home."

It's a common story—and it is especially common in Upper Marlboro, which had Prince George's County's second-highest number of foreclosures between July 1, 2008 and Sept. 30, 2008, according to a new report by the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development.

During that time, 355 households in Upper Marlboro experienced "foreclosure events"—which includes notices of default, notices of foreclosure sales and lender purchases of foreclosed properties—a total that is second only to Hyattsville's, at 470, according to the study, which was released in November.

Much of that is due to Upper Marlboro's size. The area in the DHCD study is larger than 107 square miles, and the most troubled part of the area, ZIP code 20774, had one foreclosure for every 61 households. That puts its rate of foreclosures well below areas such as Brentwood, where there was one foreclosure for every 38 households, and parts of Hyattsville, where there was one foreclosure for every 43 households.

Cheltenham had 17 foreclosures, about one out of every 46 households, giving it the county's fourth-highest foreclosure rate relative to its size.

Upper Marlboro is "huge, and it includes some very large communities," said Lenn Harley, the founder of Rockville-based Homebuilders.com, a real estate brokerage service that does business in the area.

Harley said the rural character of much of Upper Marlboro has kept foreclosure rates relatively low because it prevents high-density development where there are large clusters of foreclosed homes, such as in Bowie and Capital Heights.

Upper Marlboro's lower foreclosure rate is also partially due to the growth of luxury communities in recent decades, which are inhabited by high-income professionals who are less likely to go into foreclosure, she said.

"Physicians have no trouble getting a loan at any time," she said. "Attorneys are not much harder… Financing is easier, refinancing is easier for them."

Lisa Wiles does not live in one of those communities. Her home's value is assessed at just over $200,000, well below the median price for the area, according to county records. She said she has had trouble making ends meet for some time, forcing her to choose between making mortgage payments and taking care of her children.

"I hadn't been paying my mortgage… But it's my first obligation to take care of my kids," she said.

The median sales price for homes in the area—the amount that half of all prices are larger than and half of all prices are smaller than— climbed from $139,000 in 2000 to $562,000 in Oct. 2008, according to Trulia.com, a real estate research service.

The last few years of the development boom might be contributing to higher foreclosure rates, said Anthony Montgomery, a realtor with Riverdale-based Esquire One Brokerage. Homes that were bought after 2003, when the median sales prices started to climb rapidly, tended to be so expensive that their owners are more likely to have trouble with mortgage payments, he said.

"Upper Marlboro is one of the areas that grew the fastest, and those areas tend to have higher foreclosures," he said. "Houses purchased in the last five years tend to have the highest prices."

There are signs of progress. Upper Marlboro's most recent foreclosure rate is down by more than 8 percent from the second quarter of 2008, well ahead of the countywide drop of 2.2 percent, according to DHCD figures.

Wells said that, despite her troubles, she takes some comfort in that fact.

"This will end," she said. "Everything has a beginning, and everything has an end…. I'm just patiently waiting on God to do the miracles."

E-mail Greg Holzheimer at gholzheimer@gazette.net.