The foreclosure crisis that hurt so many homeowners may be waning, but now, more and more renters are facing eviction.

Property data provider CoreLogic's most recent foreclosure report shows that serious delinquencies -- those 90 days or more past due -- in the U.S. have dropped below the landmark 1 million plateau. So it just might be time to declare the repossession plague over.

October's 997,000 seriously delinquent loans represent a huge drop from the 1.3 million serious delinquencies a year ago. The October number means just 2.5 percent of mortgages are dangerously late, nationwide. That's the lowest percentage since August 2007, just as the real estate and mortgage crises were ramping up.

The year-over-year drop in foreclosure inventory is even more dramatic. It fell by 31.5 percent, from 465,000 units in November 2015 to 328,000 in October 2016. Currently, less than 1 percent of homes with a mortgage is in foreclosure.

The number of loans going into foreclosure has experienced year-over-year drops for the past 60 months. And with fewer and fewer homes still in foreclosure, the number of completed repos also is dropping. There were 30,000 of them in October, down 25 percent from the 40,000 seen in October 2015.

"By comparison, before the decline in the housing market in 2007, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month nationwide between 2000 and 2006," according to CoreLogic.

But, as foreclosure rates finally dwindle, renters are feeling increased financial pressure and the very real possibility of eviction.

No one really knows how many renters are being put out of their homes; the Census Bureau hasn't started tracking the number yet, but plans to in 2017. But real estate firm Redfin estimates that 2.7 million renters faced eviction in 2015.

There are local efforts to tally evictions, according to Redfin researcher Taylor Marr. But "even those can far undercount the true number of families that are forced into a move, either formally through housing courts, or informally through unscrupulous methods by property owners," she says.

Marr cites some glum market statistics: Rents are up 66 percent since 2000, while incomes have risen only by 35 percent. And in 2015, one in four renters was spending at least 50 percent of their income on rent.

Hoping to get some useful national numbers in advance of the upcoming Census Bureau effort, Redfin looked at 6 million eviction records in 19 states. That data gave the company enough confidence to estimate local and national eviction rates.

"Insufficient supply of affordable housing in many cities continues to push up housing costs, which have been rising rapidly," according to Marr. "Household incomes have not kept pace. As a result, the median rent–to-household income ratio grew by more than 2 percent in most metros from 2011 to 2014, according to the U.S. Census. We also found that neighborhoods with the highest median rent–to–income ratios have much higher eviction rates than neighborhoods that spend less of their income on rent."

Two of the three cities with the highest eviction rates are in New Jersey. Newark and Camden both have increasingly high cost-burden ratios. But Marr says that isn't the only indicator.

"In Las Vegas, where the ratio is relatively low, one out of 12 rental households are evicted each year," she reports.

One factor at play: Evictions are most common in places with a high concentration of foreign-born residents.

Evictions are especially damaging, perhaps even more so than foreclosures. Whereas former owners can often find rentals to suit their needs, evicted families are often excluded from other rental properties and from participating in the federal Section 8 subsidy program.

Getting booted from your apartment or single-family rental has also shown to cause job loss, or worse, homelessness. "Communities with high eviction rates have an unstable social structure and are plagued with crime," Marr points out.

Back to foreclosures: New Jersey turns out to be the state with the highest foreclosure inventory as a percentage of mortgaged homes, with a rate of 2.8 percent, according to CoreLogic. New York follows at 2.7 percent, with Hawaii taking the bronze at 1.7 percent. Arizona had the lowest percentage, at 0.3 percent.

Twenty-one states showed big decreases in foreclosure inventory, with Florida, one of the epicenters of the housing crisis, having the biggest decline at more than 41 percent. Florida completed more than 50,000 foreclosures from late 2015 through late 2016. In contrast, Washington, D.C. had the fewest, at 212.

-- Freelance writer Mark Fogarty contributed to this report.

Trying to build or improve your credit score so you can qualify for a mortgage? If so, count the credit cards in your wallet: Too many or too few can negatively affect your score, but there is a sweet spot.

The ideal number of credit cards, according to Philip Tirone of 720CreditScore.com, is three to five.

More than five, and the credit bureaus will worry that you could get yourself into a financial bind if you use them all at once. It doesn't matter to the bureaus whether or not you actually use them. It's the potential that raises a red flag.

Less than three cards, on the other hand, and the bureaus aren't presented with enough information about your spending behavior. Hence, they score you lower.

Here are some other things to keep in mind when applying for credit:

-- Make sure your creditors report to all three credit bureaus: Equifax, TransUnion and Experian.

-- If you need to apply for more than one card to reach the three-to-five goal, do so all at once. Part of your credit score is based on the age of your accounts, says Tirone. If you open one now, and then wait six months to open another, you will lower the average age of your accounts.

-- If you already have more than five cards, don't close the "extras" -- doing so could hurt, not help, your score. Yes, it's counterintuitive, but closing an account could lower the average age of your accounts. Instead, simply stop using the unnecessary cards and allow them to become inactive.

-- Never apply for credit jointly with your spouse. Rather, each of you should apply separately so that you both build individual credit identities.

Tirone says this is important in case you ever find yourself in a financial bind and unable to pay all of your bills. "If you have joint credit cards, both of your credit scores will take a hit, but if you build separate credit profiles, only one spouse's credit score will suffer," he says. "The other can be preserved and then leveraged for loans."

Hurricane season came and went with only one major storm hitting our shores. But a new report from Trulia suggests many of those in Matthew's path are paying for the damages out of their own pockets.

According to a Trulia analysis of government data, households in the Southeast are not as heavily insured as they were just eight years ago. Because the cost of hurricane coverage is an add-on to homeowners' policies, many people are not covered at all.

But it's not just a trend in the Southeast -- it's also a national trend, Trulia discovered. Nationwide, the number of insured homes fell from 94.1 percent eight years ago to 89.2 percent in 2014. That means more folks are choosing to go it alone.

There are numerous reasons why an owner would drop insurance coverage on perhaps their most valuable assets, but to Trulia, one stands out: Insurance is required to keep a mortgage in good standing. When people pay off their loans, they forgo insurance to save even more money.

Another reason? During the last eight years, Trulia says, premiums have climbed more than 28 percent nationally.

Landlords are legally allowed to check your criminal history, whether would-be tenants give them permission or not. So if you have a checkered history or previous housing court actions, gather together any paperwork you have showing how the legal actions were resolved.

But if a landlord tells you not to bother applying because you have a criminal record, that could be considered discrimination, according to Lisa Weintraub Schifferle, an attorney in the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer and Business Education.

In that case, you should lodge a complaint. You also have rights when a landlord or property manager uses any kind of background check to deny your application.

Says Schifferle: The landlord must give you notice of the action -- orally, in writing or electronically. The notice must provide the contact information for the company that supplied the report. The notice must tell you about your rights to correct inaccurate information, and to get a free copy of the report if you ask for it within 60 days of the landlord's decision.

You should obtain your free report, fix any errors, and have the company that supplied the report give the corrected info to the landlord. Tell the landlord about the mistake, too.

It's no secret than lending standards have been tighter since the Great Recession, which started at the hands of loose underwriting rules. But what's the true economic impact of those stricter standards?

A new paper from the Urban Institute, a bipartisan think tank, quantifies the impact as 6.3 million loans that failed to launch between 2009 and 2015. For example: If borrowers of all credit levels had had the same access to financing in 2015 that they had in 2001, the report says, lenders would have made 1.1 million more loans that year alone than they actually did.

Between 2001 and 2015, the decline in home loans was particularly acute for borrowers with credit scores below 660, which is considered decent these days. For those folks, the number of purchase loans dropped 65 percent, compared to a 20 percent decline in borrowers with scores from 660 to 700 and just 1.4 percent for those with scores above 700.

The "missing mortgages" don't just mean that millions of people were deprived of sharing in the wealth-building that usually comes with ownership, the institute says. It also means there were fewer construction jobs and fewer sales of the goods new owners typically purchase shortly after they move in.

Regulators are taking steps to expand access to credit. Although the rules won't stretch all the way back to how they were 15 years ago, the Urban Institute says that there is still much to be done. Otherwise, the impact of tight credit will reverberate throughout the economy for years to come.

Faucets are no longer simple plumbing fixtures that release hot and cold water in sinks, tubs and showers. These days, they have evolved into decorative centerpieces with innovative features and eco-friendly functionality.

At the big International Builders' Show set for early 2017 in Orlando, for example, Pfister will unveil the newest generations of faucet technology with features and designs that the world has never seen before.

Among the more than 100 new products the 100-year-old company will exhibit include a voice-controlled fixture for hands-free functionality, clear hand-crafted Italian glass faucets and fixtures, and new faucet technology that delivers both tap and filtered water from a single faucet.

Grohe will debut a hands-free faucet operated by a foot control to reduce the spread of germs. And in the bathroom, American Standard will show a self-cleaning toilet. Simply press a button and walk away, the company promises.

Back in the kitchen, Whirlpool's innovations department, WLabs, will introduce a small food recycler called the Zera. The device can turn a week's worth of food waste into compost for your plants within a 24-hour period.

According to Whirlpool, the typical family produces some 400 pounds of food waste per year. That stuff comprises roughly 20 percent of space in our landfills, and produces methane, a gas that contributes to global warning.

The new Trump administration should "incentivize" people to sell their homes, rather than fixate on timeworn policies to boost demand, says housing economist Ralph McLaughlin.

The market doesn't need buyers right now, the chief economist at Trulia explains. There are plenty of those to go around. But there aren't enough houses for sale to satisfy demand, so we'd be better to focus on boosting inventory.

Programs aimed at increasing the pool of buyers will simply lead to price increases, exasperating buyers on a budget, unless there are enough houses on the market to go around, he argues.

To encourage existing owners to sell and homebuilders to build, McLaughlin would reduce capital gains taxes on investors who snapped up single-family houses during the housing recession and increase tax rates on rental income.

"While home sales slowly recover to their pre-recession average, tight inventory continues to plague buyers and hold back growth," McLaughlin says, noting that there was a year-over-year 4.3 percent drop in the number of houses for sale in October. "If home sales are to drive up to their pre-recession levels, we'll need to see inventory continue to pick up, not fall."

The huge jump in telecommuting suggests that homebuilders should show at least one room in their floor plans as a private office.

According to Adam Artunian of John Burns Real Estate Consulting, 2 out of 5 new-home shoppers work at home at least one day a week, and 1 out of 4 who were born in the '60s and '70s work at home at least three days a week.

Most existing homes were not designed with this trend in mind, though some sellers have turned a bedroom or a living-room corner into a home office. But builders are uniquely able to do so, and that gives them a distinct advantage over resale houses.

The Burns company survey of more than 22,000 new-home shoppers found that a third want a formal office. Surprisingly, more younger buyers prefer a formal office than older ones. Alternatively, 1 in 4 homebuyers prefer an informal office connected to the family living area.

Either way, the majority of buyers said they will pay "a nice premium" for an additional small office area.

Says Artunian: At-home workers "need to escape their noisy children and barking dogs during the day. The opportunity to close the door when on a business call makes a big difference."