By Lynn Adler

NEW YORK, Nov 12 (Reuters) - U.S. home foreclosure filings slowed in October for a third straight month, but rising unemployment will spur another record year of failing mortgages in 2010, real estate data company RealtyTrac said on Thursday.

Foreclosure filings -- including notices of default, auction and bank repossession -- dipped 3 percent in October from the prior month but were up 19 percent from a year earlier.

Although foreclosure filings are off the record high hit in July and there are intensifying federal efforts to press lenders to alter terms for struggling borrowers, the chief problem lies with unemployment that is at a 26-1/2-year.

RealtyTrac estimates as many as a record 3.4 million households will get a foreclosure notice this year, a 48 percent spike from 2.3 million last year.

And RealtyTrac sees yet another record high in 2010, with only marginal improvement in 2011.

"Unless we have an almost miraculous recovery in housing and employment, there's really no way to get through this pipeline any earlier than that," Rick Sharga, senior vice president at Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac, said in an interview.

"More and more of the homes in foreclosure right now are there because of unemployment," Sharga said. "The scale of the problem is so huge that it's hard to make a dent."

With filings reported on 332,292 properties last month, one in every 385 households with loans got a foreclosure notice.