Completed foreclosures decreased 40% in December, according to the December 2016 National Foreclosure Report released by CoreLogic, a property information, analytics and data-enabled solutions provider.

Completed foreclosure dropped from 36,000 in December 2015 to 21,000 in December 2016. And foreclosure inventory also dropped significantly by 30% annually, according to the report.

“Foreclosure and delinquency trends continue to head in the right direction powered principally by increasing employment levels, stringent underwriting standards and higher home prices over the past few years,” CoreLogic President and CEO Anand Nallathambi said.

“We expect to see further declines in delinquency and foreclosure rates in 2017,” Nallathambi said. “As the foreclosure inventory diminishes, we must look ahead and tackle tight housing supply and growing affordability issues which are keeping many potential homebuyers, especially first-time buyers, on the sidelines.”

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(Source: CoreLogic)

The foreclosure inventory represents the number of homes at some stage of the foreclosure process while completed foreclosures reflect the total number of homes lost to foreclosure.

Foreclosure inventory dropped to just 0.8% of all homes with a mortgage in December, down from 1.2% in December 2015.

Homes in serious delinquency, defined as those 90 days or more past due including loans in foreclosure and REO, decreased 19.4% annually in December. In fact, these 1 million seriously delinquent mortgages, or 2.6% of all mortgages, hit the lowest level since August 2007.

“While the decline in serious delinquency has been geographically broad, some oil-producing markets have shown the effects of low oil prices on the housing market,” CoreLogic Chief Economist Frank Nothaft said. “Serious delinquency rates rose in Louisiana, Wyoming and North Dakota, reflecting the weakness in oil production.”

The states with the highest number of completed foreclosures in December 2016 included Florida with 45,000, followed by Michigan with 30,000, Texas with 24,000, Ohio with 21,000 and California with 19,000.

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(Source: CoreLogic)