Critical Response #3

In the book Freakonomics, there are topics throughout the book based on flaws in our world. In chapter two of Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner show that real-estate agents indeed have many flaws that they posses. A real-estate agent always tries to make the most profit for "himself". When clients come to him for placing their house on the market for sale, the real-estate agent tries to seal the deal with the first customer. Real-estate agents don't make much out of houses because they get a very small percentage of the final price. A real-estate agent could actually get more money for the person but chooses not too because he get a profit of a little amount that wouldn't make a difference for him. For example, in the book, the authors proclaim that "the problem is that the agent only stands to personally gain an additional $150 by selling your house for $10,000 more..." (Levitt and Dubner, 65) Furthermore, real-estate agents use hidden methods to disguise the look of the real house.

Real-estate agents are basically con-artists. Lets say they receive property that is not in very good condition and doesn't really look that nice. In order to actually sell this property then the real-estate agent must lie by saying that the house is "charming" or "in a good neighborhood" or even "fantastic." (Levitt and Dubner, 67) The reason is because if they say the truth about the house do you think it will actually sell? These terms are too broad and not very specific. Lets say a real-estate agent gets a property that is very nice and has very nice attributes like "granite" tabletops in the kitchen or even a "corian" dinning table. (Levitt and Dubner, 69) These aspects of a house could be advertised because not all house have these known to be beautiful materials in them. So the real-estate agent would include these aspects to get a higher bid but at the same time telling the truth. Moreover, stuff like this happens in everyday life.

Using descriptive and interesting words to make stuff look better is very often. For example, I sold my DJ set a few days ago. Yes, it is used but is very high-tech and rare to find around the world. So I included the best features about the system like "double channels in one channel." It is obvious that only a DJ would understand what I mean. For a person that is new to DJ's this sounds amazing. Relating it to the book, lets say one real-estate writes that the house is "gorgeous," another real-estate will look right through that and not believe it fully. The same goes for DJ's. A person that has a bad DJ set and wanted to sell it would say that it is "high-tech" and "in great condition." Who cares about these terms? A person with a good DJ set (like mine) would say the pieces contain "effects like filter, flanger, echo, and delay." This is an example of a person that has a good DJ set because he went into the specifics and the characteristics of the object. In conclusion, many till this day fall into the trap set by people that provide bad offers but say it is a good one.