Scribd
Upload
28 views2 pages

Argument 4 范文精析

Uploaded by

Tina Huang
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
28 views2 pages

Argument 4 范文精析

Uploaded by

Tina Huang
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

4、Of the two leading real estate firms in our town—Adams Realty and Fitch Realty—Adams

Realty is clearly superior. Adams has 40 real estate agents; in contrast, Fitch has 25, many of
whom work only part-time. Moreover, Adams' revenue last year was twice as high as that of
Fitch and included home sales that averaged $168,000, compared to Fitch's $144,000. Homes
listed with Adams sell faster as well: ten years ago I listed my home with Fitch, and it took
more than four months to sell; last year, when I sold another home, I listed it with Adams, and
it took only one month. Thus, if you want to sell your home quickly and at a good price, you
should use Adams Realty.

The author of this argument claims that Adams Realty is superior to Fitch Realty. To
support this claim the author cites certain statistics about the number and working hours of
the firms' agents, and the number and sales prices of homes sold by the two firms. The author
also cites anecdotal evidence involving her own experience with Fitch and Adams. Close
scrutiny of this evidence reveals that it lends little credible support for the author's assertion.
The author bases her claim partly on the fact that Adams has more agents than Fitch,
and that many of Fitch's agents work only part-time. However, the author provides no
evidence that the quality of a real-estate firm is directly proportional to the number of its
agents or the number of hours per week that its agents work. Lacking such evidence, it is
equally possible that a smaller firm is more effective than a larger one, and that a part-time
agent is more effective than a full-time agent. Besides, the author does not provide any
information about how many Adams agents work part-time.
To further support her claim the author cites the fact that Adams sold more properties
last year than Fitch. However, the author overlooks the possibility that last year's sales volume
amounted to an aberration, and that in most other years Adams has actually sold fewer
properties than Fitch. Moreover, the disparity in sales volume can readily be explained by
factors other than the comparative quality of the two firms. Perhaps Adams serves a denser
geographic area, or an area where turnover in home-ownership is higher for reasons
unrelated to Adams' effectiveness. Or perhaps sales volume is higher at Adams simply
because it employs more agents, and each Adams agent actually sells fewer homes on
average than each Fitch agent does. Without ruling out such alternative explanations for the
disparity in sales volume, the author cannot defend the conclusion that based on this evidence
that Adams is superior to Fitch.
In further support of her claim the author points out that the average sales price of a
home sold by Adams is greater than the average price of a home sold by Fitch. However, this
evidence shows only that the homes that Adams sells are more valuable on average than the
ones that Fitch sells, not that Adams is more effective in selling homes than Fitch. Moreover,
it is possible that a few relatively high-priced or low-priced properties skewed these averages,
rendering any conclusions about the comparative quality of the two firms based on these
averages unfair.
For additional support the author points out that it took Fitch Realty considerable longer
to sell one of the author's homes than it took Adams Realty to sell another one of her homes
ten years earlier. However, this disparity is explainable by other plausible factors, such as
changing economic conditions during that ten-year period, or a difference in the desirability
of the two properties. Without establishing that all other factors affecting the speed of a sale
were essentially the same for the two homes, the author cannot rely on this limited anecdotal
evidence to support her claim.
In conclusion, the author's evidence lends little credible support to her claim. To persuade
me that Adams is better than Fitch, the author would need to provide clear evidence that
individual Adams agents are more effective in selling homes than individual Fitch agents, and
that the disparity in home sales and sales price is attributable to that difference. Finally, to
better evaluate the author's claim we would need more information comparing the
percentage of agents working part-time at Fitch versus Adams. We would also need more
information about the comparative attractiveness of the author's two homes, and the extent
to which the residential real-estate market changed during the decade between the sales of
these two homes.

You might also like