NEW YORK - November 12, 2009 - U.S. foreclosure filings surpassed 300,000 for an eighth straight month as unemployment made it tougher for homeowners to pay their bills, RealtyTrac Inc. said.

A total of 332,292 properties received a default or auction notice or were seized by banks in October, up 19% from a year earlier, Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac said today. One in every 385 households received a filing. The tally fell 3% from September, the third consecutive monthly decline.

“The foreclosure problem is still with us and will keep prices down,” Stephen Miller, chairman of the economics department at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, said in an interview. “The real issue is we don’t know what inventory banks are holding that they have yet to put on the market.”

Distressed real estate transactions accounted for 30% of all home sales in the third quarter as the median price fell 11% from a year earlier to $177,900, according to the National Association of Realtors. U.S. unemployment surged to a 26-year high of 10.2% in October while payrolls fell by 190,000 workers, according to last week’s Labor Department report.