WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben S. Bernanke, urged mortgage lenders and investors on Tuesday to reduce the principal on loans for many people whose homes are no longer worth as much as the amount they still have to repay.

Noting that delinquency and foreclosure rates have soared over the last year, and that housing prices have not stopped falling, the Fed chairman warned that efforts by the government and by industry to prevent foreclosures had not gone far enough.

“Although lenders and servicers have scaled up their efforts and adopted a wide variety of loss mitigation techniques, more can, and should, be done,” Mr. Bernanke said in a speech to a conference of community bankers in Florida.

Though the Fed chairman did not explicitly endorse a new government rescue effort, he stepped up public pressure on the industry to take more drastic measures to keep people from walking away from homes when their mortgages exceed the value of their property.

“When the mortgage is ‘underwater,’ a reduction in principal may increase the expected payoff by reducing the risk of default and foreclosure,” Mr. Bernanke said. The Fed chairman warned that a large and growing number of recent home buyers now owe more than the value of their homes and may have no incentive to keep making payments.

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Economy, Foreclosure Center, Mortgages and Loans, Real Estate Market, Real Estate News foreclosures, mortgages