Homeowners across the country gained equity in their properties late last year. The only problem locally? Illinois ranked as the weakest state in the country when it comes to the average amount of equity homeowners gained last year, according to the latest research from CoreLogic.

According to the company’s Home Equity Report for the fourth quarter of 2019, U.S. homeowners with mortgages saw the equity in their homes jump 5.4 percent when compared to the same quarter a year earlier.

This is important: Equity is the difference between what you owe on your mortgage and what your home is worth. If you owe $200,000 on your Chicago home and it is worth $280,000, you have $80,000 of equity. You can then borrow against that equity in the form of home equity loans and lines of credit.

According to CoreLogic, the average homeowner in the United States gained $7,300 in home equity between the fourth quarter of 2018 and the same quarter of last year. The number of homes with mortgage that were underwater — meaning their owners owed more on their mortgages than what their homes were worth — tumbled in the fourth quarter, too. From the third quarter of 2019 to the fourth quarter of the same year, the number of mortgaged homes with negative equity fell by 4.8 percent to 1.9 million homes. Just 3.5 percent of homes with a mortgage were underwater in the fourth quarter.

Unfortunately, the news wasn’t as good for the Chicago area. According to CoreLogic, 7.9 percent of homes in the Chicago-Naperville-Arlington Heights area were underwater in the fourth quarter. At the same time, Illinois homeowners with a mortgage gained an average amount of equity of just $2,000 from the fourth quarter of 2018 to the same quarter of 2019. That ranks as the lowest average gain of any state.