Hampton we have a problem.

Hamptons homeowners are facing foreclosure at a staggering rate, a new report has found.

The number of property owners on the East End of Long Island missing three mortgage payments skyrocketed 230 percent in the last quarter of 2009, compared with the same period a year before, according to court filings compiled by PropertyShark.com

Overall in 2009, there were 566 such first-time filings -- called lis pendens, or suits pending. That's an 84 percent uptick over the year before.

The priciest of the bunch is 80 Further Lane in East Hampton, a tony beachfront home with an $8.5 million mortgage, said PropertyShark.com CEO Bill Staniford.

The owners of 80 Further Lane, Gia and David Walsh of Bronxville, could not be reached for comment.Lis pendens filings are triggered when the homeowner misses three mortgage payments, but the records do not indicate if the debtors catch up or take other action to rectify their situation.

Ted Bourie, who has overdue payments on a $3.4 million mortgage on his home at 220 Little Noyac Path in Watermill -- the second-largest loan in the records -- declined to comment.

It is often hard to tell whether affluent areas are sharing the difficulties the recession has brought to the nation's poorer quarters, because wealthier homeowners are often savvy enough to find ways to make deals and cut their losses before foreclosure.

They can, for example, arrange for short sales to sell at the best price and have the banks eat the difference.

But the statistics show that even the Hamptons are now feeling the pinch.

Nevertheless, record-breaking home sales have also been seen on Long Island's jet-set playground.

Race-car-driving hedge funder Charles Ray Langford also recently sold his Sag Harbor home for $14 million -- double that area's previous home-sale record.

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