Though hard numbers are scarce, estimates are that foreclosures will surpass one million this year. Losses on home loans are piling up faster than banks can deal with them. First Federal Bank of California said this week that as of June 30 it owned 380 foreclosed houses. It managed to sell 329 of them during the third quarter but acquired another 450.

This sense of rapidly losing ground underlies the urgency behind the Treasury’s new plan, which is being developed even as various homeowner bailouts that were announced earlier are just getting under way.

A White House spokeswoman, Dana M. Perino, said on Thursday that the plan was not “imminent” and that several different proposals were being considered.

“If we find one that we think strikes the right notes and could meet all of those standards that we want to protect taxpayers, make sure that it’s also fair and that it would actually have an impact, then we would move forward and we would announce it,” Ms. Perino said.

The Federal Housing Administration began Hope for Homeowners on Oct. 1, aimed at making as many as 400,000 mortgages affordable. Under the program, lenders will refinance loans to 90 percent of a house’s current value, automatically giving the owner 10 percent equity.

The loans will be insured by the government, which will take a share of any gain when the house is sold. If a sale occurs in the first year, the government takes it all. The second year, it takes 90 percent; and so on down a sliding scale. After five years, it takes half the gain.

To guard against fraud, an F.H.A. spokesman said, borrowers will have to certify they did not “intentionally” default.