Bankruptcies Highest in States Hit by Housing Bust

As a follow up to our last post about the Sun Belt recession this article from the Wall Street Journal shows a direct correlation between the housing bust and personal bankruptcies. The two are a natural fit considering how dramatically the fall in housing prices hurt family finances. Here’s an excerpt:

“There’s a close relationship between high levels of household debt, including mortgage debt, and bankruptcy filings,” said Samuel J. Gerdano, executive director of the American Bankruptcy Institute, a research organization made up of attorneys, accountants and other bankruptcy professionals. “That…has been exacerbated by the bursting of the housing bubble.”

In Arizona and Nevada, where bankruptcies increased most, filings skyrocketed by 79.6% and 59.5%, respectively. Nearly 6.2% of mortgages in Arizona and 9.4% of mortgages in Nevada were in foreclosure by the end of the third quarter of 2009, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

California saw personal bankruptcy filings rise 58.8% last year. At the end of the third quarter, some 5.8% of loans were in foreclosure there.

Not everyone who goes through foreclosure ends up in bankruptcy and not every bankruptcy is driven by foreclosure. Some states with relatively few foreclosures, such as Utah and Wyoming, had larger increases in personal bankruptcies than Florida, the scene of lots of foreclosures.