The following appeared in a letter from a homeowner to a friend. 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

In the letter, the author argues to a friend that Adams Realty will be superior than Fitch Realty because Adams can sell the friend’s home quickly and at a good price. At first glance, the argument seems persuasive; however, unsubstantiated assumptions lead me to conclude that the argument is unsound on many grounds.

First and foremost, the author assumes that productivity of a company can be determined by the number of agents and regular workers; therefore, the author thinks that Adams is a better choice compared to Fitch. However, it is hard to deduce that if a company has more agents, it works better because a perspicacious worker can override many ordinary workers. For example, if all the workers are novices, one expert can be better with his experience. In this line of thought, the author’s assumption on the part-time workers can be wrong because we cannot know their own ability. Therefore, the author needs to take into consideration that the number of workers does not indicate the quality of a company.

Secondly, another assumption that the author makes is that Adams sells better because hitherto, Adams’ revenue was higher than Fitch. However, the author does not provide specific evidence on the revenue, it is hard to corroborate that all of Adams’ revenue is from home sales. It is plausible that Adams’ charges more service fee to customers to earn more profits. Also, averaged revenue included home sales does not indicate that Adams’ is superior. The difference between the revenue included home sales, $24,000, can be minute in the world of real estate market. Even if the different is significant, since the author only mentions about the revenue of last year, we cannot conclude that this difference can last in this year.

Last but not least, the author falsely assumes that the conditions of home sales market and homes that he sold are same, so he can compare those two cases. However, he sold one house ten years ago, and one last year, the background conditions are conspicuously different. It is likely that he could sold his house easily because economic condition might be perfect in last year or there were more demand in houses due to the high population density. Even if all the conditions were similar, the quality of houses could be dissimilar. What I mean is that without ruling out other factors, the author cannot conclude that Adams is a better choice than Fitch.

In brief, the argument is illogical in many respects. In order to bolster this argument, the author should eliminate his assumptions that productivity of a company can be determined by the number of agents or revenue, and he could sell his home quickly due to the ability of Adams.