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LOS ANGELES — Fewer Californian home owners defaulted on their mortgages during 2001 than at any time in the last decade, despite the recession, new data shows. 

The number of foreclosures declined 8.6 percent in 2001 to 81,000 from a year earlier, according to DataQuick Information Systems, a La Jolla-based research firm. 

That represents the lowest number in the 10 years DataQuick has compiled foreclosure data and is half the amount of defaults recorded in 1996. 

The strength of the real estate market has allowed many Californians to sell or refinance homes to avoid problems. As a result, they are holding on to their homes with greater security even as consumer debt soars and unemployment remains high. 

U.S. consumer borrowing rose by nearly $20 billion in November, according to data released by the Federal Reserve last month. The amount exceeded analysts’ expectations by fourfold, and represented the biggest monthly gain in almost six decades. 

Meanwhile, the state jobless rate hovered near a five-year high at the end of last year, with 1 million Californians out of work in December. 

But robust increases in California home values have offset other weak economic forces for homeowners, said John Karevoll, an analyst with DataQuick. 

“If they get in financial trouble, they can sell, pay off what they owe, and walk away with some money,” he said. 

The appreciation of real estate values in the state means the rate of foreclosure is between one-half and two-thirds the national rate, Karevoll said. 

Home values increased by an average of 10 percent across California in 2001 to $230,000. In the entry level market, where most foreclosures traditionally occur, values have grown even faster at a rate of 13 percent to 15 percent during 2001, he said. 

That’s a vastly different scenario from the last recession in the early 1990s, when home values fell due to high unemployment and a glut of new housing supply. 

“It doesn’t represent what you should see in a recession,” Orawin Velz, an economist with Fannie Mae in Washington, D.C., said of the latest California numbers. 

Foreclosure activity has reached about as low as it can go in the state, said Karevoll. 

“There are more people now with shaky finances,” he said. 

Fannie Mae, which owns or holds in trust 20 percent of all home mortgages in the country, said mortgage defaults have been on the rise nationally. 

“We haven’t seen the worst in foreclosures yet,” said Velz, who predicted the foreclosure rate will peak at 1.16 percent nationwide this quarter, up from 1.14 percent in the fourth quarter of 2001.