Residential Foreclosures in the City of Buffalo, 1990-2000 - Federal ...

Limitations of the Study
The methodology used in this study limits our findings in several ways. Foremost, the
analysis is descriptive and does not try to explain the causes or impacts of foreclosures. In
some cases, what appear to be associations between foreclosures and characteristics may
simply be coincidences. We do not perform the statistical analysis necessary to assess
individual relationships and determine the direction of causation between variables. The
large size of our eight study areas also limits community comparisons. This occurs in part
because communities--although tending to consist of similar neighborhoods--are not
homogenous. They may contain neighborhoods with diverse socioeconomic and other
characteristics. Thus, in some instances, the average value of a characteristic at the
community level may be quite different than that of its component neighborhoods.
Furthermore, many of the phenomena that we examine exist at the neighborhood,
block, or even street level; much of this intracommunity transformation may be missed
by our analysis. Finally, because there are few local-level foreclosure studies from which
to extract data and analysis, this investigation incorporates a limited number of
comparisons with other regions. The absence of an adequate frame of reference restricts
our ability to place our findings in perspective and to understand how the rise in Buffalo
foreclosures compares with trends in other cities. (A discussion of sampling and data
collection methods and associated limitations is found in Appendix A.)
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