Gotham City has just introduced a legal requirement that

Question

Gotham City has just introduced a legal requirement that the number of tenants living in an apartment not exceed 3 persons. When a recession occurs and average incomes fall, the number of apartments putting up walls to make room for converted shared rooms goes up. Converted shared apartments reduce rent paid by each tenant. Therefore, though vacancies tend to rise in economic recessions, finding apartment accommodations in Gotham City will not be made more difficult by a recession.
 
Which of the following would be most important to determine in order to evaluate the argument?

(A) Whether in Gotham there are any apartments that charge leaseholders additional rent for each additional tenant in an apartment
(B) Whether the number of apartment hunters increases significantly during economic recessions
(C) What the current limit for number of tenants in an apartment in Gotham is
(D) What proportion of city tenants currently live in apartments that already have an extra wall that converts a large living room into an extra converted shared room
(E) Whether in the past a number of apartments in Gotham have had tenant-apartment ratios well in excess of the new limit

Help Please !!

pqhai · Accepted Answer

Hi Dhairya275

I'm happy to help.

This question id difficult because it’s hard to connect ideas in the stimulus.

ANALYZE THE STIMULUS:

Fact: Legal requirement that the number of tenants living in an apartment not exceed 3 persons. 
Fact: Recession occurs and average incomes fall, the number of apartments putting up walls to make room for converted shared rooms goes up. 
Fact: Converted shared apartments reduce rent paid by each tenant. 
 Conclusion:  Finding apartment accommodations in Gotham City will not be made more difficult by a recession.

We have two things in mind: 
(1)  Supply:  the number of apartments putting up walls  increases. 
(2)  Demand:  the number of tenants want to rent shared rooms  also increases .
 Conclusion:   It’s not difficult to find a shared room.  
 Assumption:   Supply is always greater than demand.  If NOT, it will be difficult to find a shared room. Let attack this point.

ANALYZE EACH ANSWER:  
Which of the following would be most important to determine in order to evaluate the argument?

(A) Whether in Gotham there are any apartments that charge leaseholders additional rent for each additional tenant in an apartment
 Wrong.  Even though there is additional charge, it’s still NOT difficult to FIND a shared room if the additional charge is not too much high).

(B) Whether the number of apartment hunters increases significantly during economic recessions
  Correct.   We need the relationship between demand and supply. If we don’t have that info, it’s hard to say finding a shared room is not difficult. B correctly states the that. Thus, B attacks the main point and is correct.

(C) What the current limit for number of tenants in an apartment in Gotham is
 Wrong.  Because there is nothing indicating the change of limit for number of tenants in an apartment in Gotham. We should assume that the current limit is 3. Thus, C does not help anything.

(D) What proportion of city tenants currently live in apartments that already have an extra wall that converts a large living room into an extra converted shared room
 Wrong.   TEMPTING  but wrong. We only know the proportion of tenants who live in apartments putting up with walls. But  we do NOT know this proportion is HIGH or LOW.  We can’t say anything about the relationship between demand and supply.

(E) Whether in the past a number of apartments in Gotham have had tenant-apartment ratios well in excess of the new limit
 Wrong.  We are talking about the current situation, not the past. Thus, E does not help.

Hope it helps.

soumyaranjandash · Answer

As per my view:
I can see two options B and D
B : is there so much of residential issue that people need to share place.
D : If already people are sharing then what is use of the law now?
So from these two argument says in 1st line about 3 people law...if this would have been the issue then it would have satisfied D.
But in the last line it says there won't be any issue of searching house during crisis, taht means people increses during this crisis for rent so they search houses.And the law will be helpful in that time.So it satisfies B , that how many people will be available during crisis so that law will be helpful.

Please let me know if it helps!!!!

Carcass · Answer

Wow really good question.

Try to figure out what going on sentence by sentence

Ok A new law come into the picture. No more than 3 persons per apartment

Of course more people in a single apartment means fewer costs for the tenants and more money for the owner

What just I said thanks to a pre-thinking

This is the conclusion of our stimulus and we have to strenghten and weaken AT THE SAME TIME in order to evaluate the same.

TIPS: most of the time evaluate an argument stays in between what I just said and must be true because is strongly related to the argument itself (a sort of restatement of what the argument says, in a broad sense)

Is not related. Out

MMMMM seems good

hold it

I'm not quite sure what that means but is too convoluted: extra wall but we care about to find an apartment where to live........OUT

The past is over...who cares of the past

mmmmmmm what is the current level maybe is good maybe not. However, we are talking about something that will happen who came into town wants to find a flat. The current do not affect if we can or not find a lodging. Is really tricky this one, think anbout that: we are 10 people that we are just arrived in NEW York City we do not know the number of the current number of tenants. Rather, we have to care about if we are alone OR another million people are searching for something similar to what we are looking for. So the latter scenario will be OUR scenario.

In other words, if could be or not competition for a flat. This kind of reasoning leads us straight to answer choice B

B wins

In fact our conclusion talks about: even though the vacancies tend to rises during a period of recession....and this could be even true but if the rises is more than who search we reinforce the argument BUT if the flats will be fewer than the people we weaken the argument.

Hope this helps you. It was a really good question

veergmat · Answer

During recession, people lose job, freshers struggle to get job, cut in salary,no increment ............ LESS/NO MONEY or LIQUIDITY , people spend less.
Why would anyone will like to go for costly accommodation during recession when cheaper options are available ?
But the question is , if most of the apartments get converted into shared apartment, number of vacancies will increase.But it is nowhere mentioned that from where or by whom all those vacancies will be filled.

Option B addresses the same issue

sheolokesh · Answer

Yes, but I feel B and D are equally evaluating on different ways..

(B) Whether the number of apartment hunters increases significantly during economic recessions
For this, if the ans is yes, then passing the regulation is good. If no, then passing the regulation is useless...

(D) What proportion of city tenants currently live in apartments that already have an extra wall that converts a large living room into an extra converted shared room?
On this, if the proportion is already high, then they wont find even more cheap apartments and regulation will be useless, as the tenants don't have to find one. If the proportion is low, then there will be a need to find one in times of recession, so the regulation will be useful..

Please help..

veergmat · Answer

Those who are already living in shared accommodation will naturally come on road during recession. And hence creating required vacancy

....... joking :lol:

From This statement only the current distribution/proportion of the population living in shared apartments can be found.It is not addressing the necessity / demand during recession period.

Ivan91 · Answer

I really believe that A could be correct as well.
If the leaseholder is charged additional amount, depending on how much, the apartment can become really expensive and this can prevent people from moving in there; hence, it WILL in fact become more difficult for these people to find a place there

But this once more confirms my thoughts that non OG questions are simply not worth the time

bankerboy30 · Answer

Can someone explain how the last sentence makes sense? Though vacancies tend to rise, it should not be hard to find an apartment. If vacancies rise. It will be easy to find an apartment. The use of though seems to want to introduce a something on the contrary to ease of finding a place. Can anyone explain?

sheolokesh · Answer

Ok, then let me reframe Option D in this way,

During non recession if 99 of 100 apartments are having shared living, during recession if all 100 becomes shared apartments. In this senario, the new Law will have no efficient effect and viseversa. Then how the law could not rely on this? To check the demand vs availabiity rate, I feel this information is vital..

veergmat · Answer

Lokesh Bhai !!

Then what if I say that during recession only 1 person is looking for the shared accommodation. And for what you have assumed 99/100 during non recession the remaining one apartment owner puts lets say 6 walls and hence creating 6 more vacancies. Thats why inorder to restrict supply court has restrained the no, of tenants max upto 3.

So here court has limited the supply. Now to further evaluate the argument we need to know the demand that will be created during recession period.

Now lets see option D
If the proportion of city tenants currently live in shared apartments is known, then also it will not help in determining the the demand?

For example : 
'x' no.s of person are living in twin sharing.
'y' in triple sharing and so on.........

It is possible that during recession period , some might switch from twin to triple sharing or even more , in that case proportion will be the same but demand is changing .

I hope the above explanation is helpful to you Lokesh.

sheolokesh · Answer

Ok, I hope I am getting it now.. What I thought is, if 99% of the people(lets say each earning 10000$ PM) are already staying in cheap shared rented apartments(100$ rent). So I thought ressesion will not have effect on them as 100$ is an affordable cost... So we need to find out who could not pay(those falls under 1%, earning 1000$ PM) and only those 1% will search for the cheaper apartments... Thus leads to a question what is option B....

On the whole D needs an answer of another question to evaluate it... But B is a more direct one..

On the whole D needs an answer of another question to evaluate it... But B is a more direct one..

VerbalBot · Answer

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