Credentials
Professional History
Marketing Director — Foreclosure Defense Law Firm
Leads marketing for a Washington State foreclosure defense practice. Daily exposure to early-stage distress data — why homeowners fall behind, which programs work, and what the pipeline looks like before it reaches official statistics. American Default Research grew directly out of this work.
American Distress Index — Founded
Created the American Distress Index to fill the gap left by the CredAbility Consumer Distress Index, which ceased publication in 2013. The ADI combines five statistically independent dimensions of household financial distress into a quarterly composite score. Full methodology published and open to scrutiny.
COO — Ark Law Group
Chief operating officer of a foreclosure defense firm serving homeowners in five states, in foreclosure, short sales, loan modifications, and bankruptcy. Twice named to the Puget Sound Business Journal Fast 50. Wrote Short Sale Your Home.
Founder — Seattle Short Sales
Founded Seattle Short Sales at the onset of the 2008 crisis. Negotiated over 1,000 short sales between distressed homeowners and their mortgage servicers during the Great Recession — direct exposure to the mechanics of household financial collapse at scale.
Founder — Washington Foreclosure Assistance
Property preservation on foreclosed homes during the early-2000s housing run-up — the first of two decades spent inside the machinery of American household financial distress.
Why American Default Research Exists
The CredAbility Consumer Distress Index was the only public composite measure of U.S. household financial health from 1980 through 2013. When it ceased publication, the gap was never filled. For 13 years — through expansion, COVID-19, post-pandemic inflation, and the current cycle — no independent, transparent composite tracked whether American households were stable or falling behind.
American Default Research fills that gap. The American Distress Index is built entirely from federal data sources (FRED, BLS, Federal Reserve Board, NY Fed), with full methodology published and calculations open to independent verification.
Editorial Stance & Funding
Every number American Default Research publishes traces to the data or a cited source. Analysis and projections are labelled as ours, so a reader can always tell the measured figure from the interpretation built on it.
The site does not sell its public data or paywall any indicator. When a homeowner asks for help through the site's form, Ross connects them with one attorney, real estate agent or debt-relief provider. No one pays for that referral, and the site never sells a homeowner's information. No homeowner is contacted unless they ask to be. If any of this changes, this page will say so.
Where a conflict could exist, the site states it directly rather than burying it. Transparency is a stronger trust signal than the absence of conflict.
Contact
For media inquiries, methodology questions, or data collaboration, email: press@americandefault.org
Journalists: see the press kit for canonical citation formats, current story angles, and embed code.