It’s hard to picture 2.8 million homes. That’s about how many detached homes are in all of Pennsylvania or Illinois. It’s also how many homes were lost to foreclosure in 2009.

There were 3.9 million foreclosure filings last year, RealtyTrac reports today, 2.8 million of which resulted in foreclosure. That’s a record dating back to at least 2005 — when RealtyTrac started keeping track. We say it’s safe to call this one another “worst since the Great Depression” statistic.