BOISE, Idaho — Nan Holmes, a senior escrow officer at a title insurer, says her insider’s view of the local market gave her the confidence three years ago to pay $370,000 for a new home in Boise. She got a price she liked from the builder and 100 percent bank financing.

That was before the bottom fell out of the housing market in California, Nevada and Florida as borrowers with bad credit began defaulting in record numbers, setting off a recession. Holmes, who had earned $150,000 a year when real estate was booming, saw her compensation shrink by half when business cooled, forcing her to dip into savings and sell jewelry. She stopped paying the mortgage in April and has put the house on the market for $145,000 less than she owes the bank.

Home foreclosures are climbing in the Northwest and Midwest, areas that had earlier dodged the worst of the mortgage crisis, according to real estate data firm RealtyTrac Inc. With 14.6 million Americans out of work and consumer spending declining, further weakness in housing could push the economy back into recession, said former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

Foreclosure rates in Utah, Idaho, Illinois and Colorado rose in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, and rank among the 10 highest in the country. The number of homes seized by lenders at least doubled in 19 states and more than tripled in seven of them, according to Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac.

Defaults declining at origin

New defaults are declining and appear to have bottomed in states where the crisis began, falling 43 percent in California, 37 percent in Florida and 27 percent in Nevada in the second quarter from a year earlier, RealtyTrac’s data show.

“The worst is over, but it’s going to be a long road ahead,” said economist Steven Frable at IHS Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Mass.

Last month, 325,229 properties got a notice of default, auction or bank repossession, RealtyTrac said. While that’s an increase of 4 percent from June, the number was down almost 10 percent from a year earlier. One in 397 households received a filing. Lenders seized 92,858 properties in July, the second-highest monthly tally since RealtyTrac began records in January 2005.

“The numbers are exploding due to unemployment and economic displacement,” said Rick Sharga, senior vice president of marketing at RealtyTrac. “We will see them get a lot worse unless we see some job creation.”

More than 4.4 million people are collecting unemployment benefits, and almost 5.3 million are getting emergency and extended payments. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress on July 21 the outlook is “unusually uncertain.”

Home seizures soared 822 percent in Idaho in the second quarter, and the state had the seventh-highest foreclosure rate, according to RealtyTrac.

‘Off-the-chart’ event

The metropolitan area, home to a third of Idaho’s 1.54 million residents, has been pummeled by housing-related construction and retail job losses, as well as layoffs at chipmaker Micron Technology Inc. and grocer Albertsons, said Michael Ferguson, the state’s chief economist.

Idaho’s jobless rate was 8.8 percent in July, up from 8.2 percent a year earlier and 2.9 percent in July 2007.

“This is an off-the-chart, extreme financial event,” Ferguson said. “I wasn’t around for the Depression, but in the last half century there has been nothing like this.”