Area bankruptcies down
Personal bankruptcy filings in Western New York dropped by 23 percent from a year ago during the first half of this year as the region bucked the nationwide trend that saw bankruptcy filings jump by 30 percent.
Jeffrey Freedman, a local attorney specializing in bankruptcy cases, said the decline in filings in the 17 counties served by the U. S. Bankruptcy Court’s Western District of New York, is partly due to the region’s stable real estate values.
“Western New York didn’t experience the bubble in real estate prices and the kind of creative mortgage lending used in other areas of the country,” Freedman said. “As a result, we’ve also been spared from the record foreclosures seen elsewhere.”
But Freedman said consumers in Buffalo Niagara still are being squeezed by rising fuel prices and high debt levels. Moody’s Economy.com said the percentage of after-tax income that consumers pay on debt each month grew to nearly 20 percent last year, up from 18.5 percent in 2004.
