[categories: Washington bankruptcy attorney]

One in every 129 Western Washington households received a foreclosure filing notice with the largest annual increase in foreclosure filings anywhere in the country.

What does this mean to you? It means that you have little hope of your home price rising in order to allow you to pull funds out of the home to pay off credit card debt or other bills. In my estimation, your home value is going to sink like a rock at worst and stall out completely for many years, at the very best.

The next largest jump was the Chicago-Naperville-Joliet area, with a 35% annual jump, with one in every 84 households receiving a foreclosure notice.

The Washington state unemployment rate stands at about 9.0%, by official statistics, but remember that many more people that this are out of work, because people who are unable to find a job after an extended search are not counted in that 9.0%, so "real" unemployment is likely higher. Also this statistic does not well include the "underemployed" working significantly less than full time (but who would rather be working full time) or those who are working out of their normal field of labor at a reduced wage (e.g. the geologist once earning $100k annually no working as a Walmart greeter). Nationally, "official" unemployment stands at about 9.6%.

The highest foreclosure rate was in Las Vegas-Paradise, Nevada, where one in every 25 homes received a foreclosure warning in the July-September time period.

In more bad news, spending by companies on capital goods (excluding aircraft purchases) dropped 0.6% in September, after a brief rise of 4.8% in August 2010. This category is viewed as a good proxy for business investment in the economy, and it has declined in two of the last three months. New home sales are down 78% from their peak of 1.4 million homes in 2005. New home sales are at their worst level since 1963, with sales at an annual pace of only 307,000 for the month of September.

Banks have seized/fully foreclosed some 816,000 homes nationwide January 1, 2010 – September 30, 2010, and will have seized more than 1,000,000 homes by the end of the year.

Source: Tacoma News Tribune, Thursday, October 28, 2010, from Alex Veiga of The Associated Press.