Brockton firefighters called to this vacant home at 21 Hamilton St. on Dec. 11 arrived to find the property engulfed in flames. Evidence of unlawful entry and drug use was found at the scene, but investigators of such fires are keeping a sharp eye out for an increase in arson by owners facing foreclosure.

Pinched by their mortgages and facing imminent foreclosure, some homeowners get desperate – desperate enough to torch their houses and make a wild grab for insurance money, according to some fraud investigators and fire officials.

The growing number of foreclosures across the state has insurance companies on alert for increased fraud, and some fire departments are zeroing in on suspicious cases that have already crossed their paths. Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is considering forming a task force to look into the matter, although a spokeswoman with her office said Coakley is still in “very preliminary” talks with the state fire marshal and Insurance Fraud Bureau of Massachusetts.

Amie Breton, Coakley’s spokeswoman, said it was too soon to speculate on when the attorney general might decide on whether to tackle the issue, but that “we have our pulse on all things foreclosure.”

Many officials are sniffing the air for any whiff of arson, but they say it’s too soon to furnish hard numbers on how many Bay State homes may be going up in smoke for financial reasons. For the time being, it’s a matter of suspicious coincidences, such as a confirmed New Bedford arson late last week in a house that Jennifer Mieth, spokeswoman for the state fire marshal, said was approaching foreclosure.

Investigators are keeping history in mind, Mieth said: the bottom fell out of the housing market in the early 1990s, and as foreclosures rose, so did incidences of suspicious fires.

“We had a huge fire problem here [in the late 1980s and early 1990s],” said Lt. Mark Aliberti of the Lawrence Fire Department. Although Lawrence hasn’t seen any unusual rise in house fires this year, they’re scheduling extra patrols of vacant houses and reaching out to banks and real estate agents about keeping watch over their properties.

Bill Walsh, vice president of claims with the Massachusetts Property Insurance Underwriting Association, said recent months have brought a higher number of suspicious blazes. In the past few years, 25-30 fires would come on the radar annually as potential arsons, he said, but that number has edged up toward 50 such fires in the past 12 months or so.

“It’s arson for survival, not arson for profit,” Walsh said. With home values dropping, some people might figure that their insurance is worth more than their home – setting a fire might forestall foreclosure, give them some cash, or they reason that insurance payments to their mortgage lenders might ease debts.

‘Alarming Rate’

Walsh noted that the current real estate downturn is increasing risks in other ways. The rise in foreclosures is simply leaving more homes vacant. Even if the owner doesn’t actively try to burn the place down, an empty house isn’t being watched over, and that heightens chances of a fire breaking out, whether from trespassers or other reasons.

A number of Massachusetts-based property insurers said they’re keeping a closer eye on all house fire claims. Doug Bailey, a spokesman for Quincy-based Arbella Insurance, said fire claims are getting a closer watch.

“The bottom line is we are watching the situation closely,” he said in an e-mail.

But Arbella hasn’t yet reported any unusual increase in such claims. The Insurance Fraud Bureau of Massachusetts hasn’t yet noticed any unusual spike in the numbers, either. So while many watchers are keyed up for big trouble, others – such as Frank Scafidi, spokesman with the nonprofit National Insurance Crime Bureau – advise everybody to calm down until more evidence comes in.

“We’re not finding anything to support it – nothing, zero, nada, zilch,” Scafidi said. About six weeks ago, his organization sent out a mass message to its hundreds of member businesses asking them to send back information on specific cases where this type of fraud took place.

No replies thus far, he said. Not one. People are concerned about it, and even others in Scafidi’s own organization are convinced that the arson trend is real, he said. So while it’s entirely possible that those kinds of fraud cases could materialize as the foreclosure crisis worsens, he said, the worrisome anecdotal reports have tended to be overblown.

Whether it’s a bona-fide trend or not, some Massachusetts fire departments are ramping up surveillance of vacant houses and taking a hard look at house fires they come across.

Lt. Edward Williams of the Brockton Fire Department says he’s investigating three suspicious house fires that broke out in the past four months. In each case, the houses were occupied by owners in bad financial situations.

“It’s an alarming rate,” he said. Like Lawrence, Brockton is trying to get ahead of any problems by careful scrutiny of foreclosed properties, including urging real estate agents and managers to keep careful track of properties under their watch.