LAST week, the stock market tumbled on news that housing foreclosures and delinquencies rose again in the first quarter. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said that among the 34 million loans it tracks, foreclosures in progress rose 22 percent, to 844,389. That figure was 73 percent higher than in the same period last year.

But the comptroller’s office also said that amid the gloom, there was promising data about loan modifications: they rose 55 percent in the quarter. That growth came on a very low base, of course, but the move encouraged John C. Dugan, head of the comptroller’s office.

“As the administration’s ‘Making Home Affordable’ program gains traction and helps offset the impact of this very difficult economic cycle,” he said in a statement, “we should continue to see progress in future reports.”

A glimpse of second-quarter mortgage data, however, indicates that the progress Mr. Dugan and his colleagues in Washington are hoping for may take longer to emerge  raising questions about whether policymakers and banks are moving quickly or intelligently enough on the foreclosure problem.