After the largest dip in foreclosure petitions in three years in April, March saw foreclosure activity in Massachusetts jump nearly 6 percent, according to The Warren Group.

March was the first time in six months that foreclosure petitions increased, as there were 1,247 petitions to foreclose on properties filed that month, according to the real estate and financial consulting firm. That’s a 5.8 percent increase from March 2016.

March’s petition total is the first year-over year increase of any months since September. And it’s a significant change month-over-month, as there were just 788 petitions filed in March, when foreclosures dropped by their largest margin since February 2014, The Warren Group reported.

No cause for alarm

The increase in foreclosure petitions could be seen as a surprise for a Massachusetts housing market that is considered healthy, but the Warren Group sees no cause for alarm in the figures.

“Though we’ve seen a steady decline in foreclosure starts for six months as backlogs of legal work were cleared out, petitions have inched up in March,” Timothy Warren, CEO of the Warren Group, said in a statement. “I’m pretty confident that we will see a return to declining foreclosure starts in the months ahead. If so, the increase in March will be a random blip on the radar screen.”

Other figures paint a more optimistic portrait. Though foreclosure petitions shot up in March, the year-to-date numbers still show a decrease in foreclosure activity over the same time period last year. In Q1 of this year, the state saw 2,934 petitions filed, down 13 percent from the 3,367 filed over the first three months of 2016.

Similarly, year-to-date foreclosure auctions have dipped 7 percent since the same period.

A foreclosure petition is the first public record in the foreclosure process and signals when a lender is intended to foreclose on a property, according to the Warren Group.