Massachusetts residents can now expect more reprieve from their foreclosure woes as the state government formalized a new law on Saturday, enabling troubled homeowners more effective ways to dodge the prospect of being evicted from their homes.

In a symbolic ceremony and amidst the emergence of alarming foreclosure cases in the state, Governor Deval Patrick initialized the bill in a foreclosed Brockton house, which eventually saw renovation and return on the property market.

He also acknowledged that despite the seeming economic recovery, many more thousands of families in the state were grappling with impacts of the wave of foreclosures that had hit the state during the global financial crisis.

Patrick said that the new legislation added more teeth on government’s efforts to protect hard-hit tenants and homeowners as he stressed that “combined with the 2007 comprehensive foreclosure law, we are redoubling our efforts to address the foreclosure crisis.”

The state government said that the initiative prevents lenders from effecting mass evictions and restricts provisions on kicking out tenants, who could only be thrown out for non-payment of rents and other forms of reneging on their contract lease.

Under the law, property owners were given up to 150 days of reprieve and negotiate with their lenders in order to avoid forfeiture and lenders at the same time could actually scale back the cooling off period to the original 90 days once amicable settlements have been reached in place of foreclosures.

Also, the new law gives elderly homeowners the option to apply for reverse mortgage and confer with an advisor duly-sanctioned by the Executive Office of Elder Affairs.

Massachusetts Communities Action Network representative Lew Finfer praised the legislation’s provision of outlawing residential mortgage fraud, which had been a perennial advocacy of the housing community.

He said that too many times, tenants were trapped by foreclosure disputes between landlords and banks, which intend to seize a property in question free from existing tenants in order to capitalize on higher market value for the building.

Prior to the introduction of the law, Finfer said that tenants were hapless once banks ordered immediate evictions even if they were paying on time or holding live contracts for the property, adding that the new law is an effective game-changer for the property renting sector.

On the other hand, banks and property agents said that they are still studying the new law’s requirements though they conceded that the passed legislature is better as against its previous version, which they claimed was dead set to trample on many of their rights.

Greater Boston Real Estate Board chief executive Gregory Basil argued that it is only natural for new owners to place an acquired property back in the market as no investors would want to see an idle investment.

He is happy that the new law provided troubled owners some leeway to discuss acquisition deal with a prospective buyer with options of evicting tenants, noting though that once a bank or a lender seizes control of the disputed property, tenants could stay.

On its part, the Mass Bankers Association is hoping that the new law would not lead to market confusion since its provisions were set to take effect almost immediately but the group’s director for federal policy, Jon Skarin, gave assurance that the association’s members were advised to honor and follow the measures.

Proponents of the passed bill clarified that the new legislation also aimed to benefit the community as a whole aside from the obvious advantages to be picked up by the state’s homeowners and tenants.

Democrat Legislator Charles Murphy pointed to the reality of abandoned properties being transformed into havens by criminals but with the new law such possibilities have been greatly minimized.

He added that charitable organizations were also poised to enjoy a seven-year property tax exemption scheme as provided by new law, enabling them to purchase foreclosed properties to be used for affordable housing development projects.