Foreclosures fell 24 percent across the country in 2013, with December’s monthly tally down 14 percent compared with 2012, according to a new report from real estate data and analytics provider CoreLogic.

According to the report, there were 620,111 completed foreclosures across the country in 2013 compared with 820,498 in 2012. For the month of December, there were 45,000 completed foreclosures, down from 52,000 in December 2012. On a month-over-month basis, completed foreclosures decreased 4.1 percent, from 47,000 reported in November 2013. Prior to the decline in the housing market in 2007, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006.

U.S. foreclosure inventory declined even more steeply in 2013, with approximately 837,000 homes in the United States in some stage of foreclosure at year’s end, compared with 1.2 million in December 2012, a year-over-year decrease of 31 percent. The foreclosure inventory as of December 2013 represented 2.1 percent of all homes with a mortgage compared with 3 percent in December 2012. The foreclosure inventory was down 2.7 percent from November 2013 to December 2013, according to CoreLogic.

"The foreclosure inventory fell by more than 30 percent in December on a year-over-year basis, twice the decline from a year ago," Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic, said in a statement. "The decline indicates that the distressed foreclosure inventory is healing at an accelerating rate heading into 2014."

The five states with the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in December 2013 were Florida, Michigan, California, Texas and Georgia. Together, they accounted for almost half of all completed foreclosures nationally.

The five states with the highest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of all mortgaged homes were Florida (6.7 percent), New Jersey (6.5 percent), New York (4.9 percent), Connecticut (3.6 percent) and Maine (3.6 percent).