Movin', But Not Up To The East Side: Foreclosures and Social Disorganization in Orange County, Florida

Abstract

The recent foreclosure crisis in the USA has called for a revival in social disorganization research to examine how communities are being affected. While a number of studies have examined the direct relationship between social disorganization and crime in communities plagued by foreclosure, they have failed to look at the link between social disorganization and real estate indicators. This study fills this gap by examining Orange County, Florida in 2010 using realtor-reported transactional information, a type of data that are rich in transactional information but has yet to be utilized. The findings of this study indicate that negative social capital significantly predicts areas with higher concentrations of foreclosures (positive relationship) and traditional sales (inverse relationship). The proportion of Fair Housing Administration/Veterans Administration loans, the average days on market and the proportion of affluent households in the community also significantly predict these transactions. Limitations of the study as well as directions for future research are also discussed.

Keywords::

• Foreclosures
• social disorganization theory
• mortgages
• real estate
• communities

Notes

¹ The FFIEC program used to compile census data is available for download at http://www.ffiec.gov/hmda/censusproducts.htm.

² While traditional indicators of immigrant concentration such as the proportion of Spanish speaking households were originally included in the factor analysis, it was not included in the final factors due to its poor fit. This departure from previous research is most likely attributed to the study's location, as there is a considerable portion of the population of Orange County Florida are native Latinos and Spanish speakers (Orange County has a large population of Puerto Ricans).

³ Although this factor is somewhat different from previous research (Sampson et al., 1999), the individual measures loading best onto this factor clearly indicate residential instability.