Completed foreclosures and foreclosure inventory declined last year, a national report released this week noted.

Foreclosures have also declined in the local housing market, according to Cindy Payne, president of the Realtor Association of Southern Kentucky.

CoreLogic’s “December 2015 National Foreclosure Report” showed foreclosure inventory down 23.8 percent and completed foreclosures down 22.6 percent compared with December 2014.

Payne said, as of Thursday, there were four homes locally in foreclosure and five other homes have completed the foreclosure process and have been sold thus far in 2016.

Historically, the Bowling Green-Warren County region is more conservative and didn’t experience the numbers of foreclosures that occurred in other areas of the country, such as Florida, where one subdivision might contain hundreds of homes in foreclosure.

“Our community is more stable,” said Payne, who works for Coldwell Banker Legacy Real Estate.

In comparison, while there were 700 homes on the market at one point in 2008, that number had decreased to 329 homes on the market as of Thursday, she said. “We have just under three months inventory in homes,” Payne said. 

There have been some housing starts in 2016 locally, but more are needed to satisfy the market, she said.

In particular short supply are homes priced from $100,000 to $200,000, Payne said.

Foreclosures in the association’s 10-county region in southcentral Kentucky have consistently declined since 2012, when they stood at 8 percent of home sales. Foreclosures dropped to 6.4 percent in 2013 and further declined to 4.2 percent in 2014. In 2015, 2.9 percent of the homes sold were foreclosures, Payne said. 

Completed foreclosures are those finalized legally while foreclosure inventory includes those foreclosures still in the legal process.

Completed foreclosures across America dropped during 2015 from 41,000 in December 2014 to 32,000 in December, CoreLogic reported.

Completed foreclosures peaked at 117,722 in September 2010. Since September 2008, when the national financial crisis ensued, there have been about 6.1 million completed foreclosures and since home ownership peaked in the second quarter of 2004, about 8 million homes have been lost to foreclosure, according to the report.

About 1.1 percent of all homes with mortgages, or about 433,000, remained in the foreclosure inventory in December, compared to about 568,000 homes (1.5 percent) in December 2014, the CoreLogic report said.

“The December 2015 foreclosure inventory rate is the lowest for any month since November 2007,” the CoreLogic report said.

The number of homes with mortgages 90 days or more past due‚ including loans in foreclosure, declined by 23.3 percent from December 2014 to December. 

“Maryland, which can be described as a suburb of the solid D.C. market, led the way with a 59 percent decrease in foreclosures in 2015,” Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic, said in a news release.

“The supply of distressed inventory continues to shrink rapidly,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and chief executive officer of CoreLogic, in a release. “The lack of housing stock – particularly affordable inventory – is a growing issue and will limit a full housing recovery in the short to medium term,” Nallathambi added.

Kentucky’s completed foreclosures dropped from 4,342 to 3,001 from December 2014 to December 2015.

— Follow business reporter Charles A. Mason on Twitter at twitter.com/BGDNbusiness or visit bgdailynews.com.