Michael Appleton for The New York Times

It was just after 3 p.m. Thursday in a second-floor courtroom in Brooklyn when an auctioneer announced to a crowd of about 60 people that she would begin selling foreclosed properties.

“Stand up and state your name and your bid in a loud and clear voice,” she instructed those in the gallery, then offered a property on Fulton Street that was being foreclosed upon by a company called Instant Capital.

A moment later, several voices sounded. But they were not making bids. They belonged to about a dozen men and women who had entered the courtroom with the goal of obstructing the auction.

In unison, they sang a gospel-style song:

Mrs. Auctioneer,

All the people here,

We are asking you to hold off the sales right now,

We are going to survive but we don’t know how

By the end of the demonstration, nine of them were led out of the courtroom in handcuffs.

Brownstoner via Vimeo

The interruption in business as usual at the State Supreme Court building on Adams Street was staged by Organizing for Occupation, a coalition of housing advocacy groups that recently helped halt the eviction of an 82-year-old woman in Bedford-Stuyvesant in a foreclosure proceeding that the woman and her supporters said resulted unjustly from a subprime loan.

The group, whose ranks on Thursday included some protesters moonlighting from Occupy Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, said in a statement that it was protesting “a system designed to benefit financial lending institutions at the expense of homeowners and low-income communities.” It has demanded an end to foreclosure proceedings until the State Legislature passes laws that better protect homeowners.

As the protesters continued singing, court officers and court employees conferred. After about 10 minutes of being serenaded a lieutenant announced: “You are disrupting a court proceeding. If you don’t stop now you will be removed from the courtroom.”

The singers stood and began clapping as they continued to harmonize. The auctioneer sat with her hands folded beneath her chin and watched the singers. Some in the gallery left the courtroom; others entered to see what was going on.

Just before 3:30, court officers announced that anyone who did not clear the courtroom would be arrested. Most of the crowd got up and departed, but about 10 singers remained. A moment later, they emerged from the courtroom into a corridor, cuffed, escorted by court officers and still singing.

Arlene Hackel, a spokeswoman for the state’s Office of Court Administration, said that nine people were arrested and given summonses for disorderly conduct.

Outside the courthouse, close to 100 supporters waited for news of those who had been arrested.

Inside, spectators and would-be bidders sat on wooden benches in a hallway as they waited for the auction to resume. Among them was Michael Nicholas, 50, from Ridgewood, Queens, who said that he had been attending foreclosure auctions in Brooklyn for a decade but had never before witnessed a choir take over the courtroom.

“I was expecting the auction to begin,” he said. “Then instead I got the chorus line.”