"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."....
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The author in his article concludes that between the two real estate firms in his town Adams Realty is superior to that of Fitch Realty. He supports his conclusion with certain points which seem to be convincing at first glance, but as we look deeper the reasons are contentious.
The author cites that the number of employees at Adams Realty is more than Fitch Realty. He states that there are 25 employees in the Fitch Realty, most of them are part time workers. But he fails to tell us exactly how many in the 40 employees of Adams Realty are part time workers. There may be a possibility that Adam’s have number of part time employees than Fitch Realty. Thus, the criterion of number of employees doesn’t help the argument to be reasonable.
Furthermore, revenue of both the firms is compared. In contrast to the Fitch Realty, Adam’s Realty earns twice. But it is no-where mentioned about how many sales did each of them make? It may be possible that the profit to sale ratio was more in Fitch Realty. The sales of Adams realty might be more than of its rival, but the profit earned per sale was less. Hence, author should have been elaborative to discuss more about the revenue, how much the profit and sales were? Moreover he states the fact that average home sales of Adams Realty was $168,000 which is more than that of Fitch Realty’s average home sale was $144,000. Again the author fails to mention how much profit they made in these sales, which in turn is necessary to claim any one of them to be superior.
The author also cites that home listed with Adams sell faster. He uses examples from his personal experiences with these firms to prove this reason. He claims that last year the home listed with Adams was sold in a month whereas the home listed with Fitch Realty took four months to sell; but ten years ago. It might have been possible that the home listed with Fitch Realty was not as good as the one listed with Adams on property terms. The property listed with Fitch Realty might not be saleable faster due to certain drawbacks like less popularity, etc. It may be possible that the real estate sector ten years ago was not as strong as it is now. Also, he should have mentioned the benefits about the deals to claim that Adams was superior firm. In addition to these it can be concluded that Fitch Realty is in the business from at least ten years, but the age of Adams Realty in the sector is not stated even indirectly. This might lead us to a conclusion that Fitch Realty is more established than Adams Realty, further doubting the superiority of Adams Realty.
To summarize up, the reasons stated to draw the conclusion that Adams realty is superior firm than that of Fitch Realty are based on fallacious assumptions. The author needs to be more specific in answering the questions raised, until which the argument seems to be debilitated.
argument 1 -- not OK.
suggested:
if Fitch conducts the main portion of the selling processes through the internet or via specialized software, they are likely to need a lot less agents, and this can be counted as a great superiority instead of a disadvantage. Or perhaps, agents in Fitch are more experienced and can get the job done a lot faster and therefore their presence diminishes the need of company for many agents.
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK but verbose.
suggested:
when the author says that 10 years ago his house was sold in four months by Fitch whereas it did in one month by Adam, he certainly is assuming that the process of selling the houses has not changed during these years. It is possible that if the selling process has improved in Fitch they could have sold the house in only a week, last year. Or even if we assume that the speed of selling has not changed in either of the firms, it is possible that 10 years ago, Fitch had management problems that prevented it from working efficiently.
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 25 15
No. of Words: 515 350
No. of Characters: 2306 1500
No. of Different Words: 203 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.764 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.478 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.166 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 140 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 76 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 57 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 32 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.6 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.446 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.64 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.349 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.526 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.209 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5