While the owner of a condominium apartment has free and clear title to

Question

While the owner of a condominium apartment has free and clear title to the dwelling,  owners of cooperative apartments have shares in a corporation that owns a building and leases apartments to them.

(A) While the owner of a condominium apartment has free and clear title to the dwelling,

(B) The owner of a condominium apartment has free and clear title to the dwelling, but

(C) Whereas owners of condominium apartments have free and clear title to their dwellings,

(D) An owner of a condominium apartment has free and clear title to the dwelling, whereas

(E) Condominium apartment owners have a title to their dwelling that is free and clear, while

sudarshan22 · Accepted Answer

Official Explanation :

Choices A, B,  and  D  can be faulted for comparing a single owner of a condominium with owners of cooperative apartments.

In  choice C , the best answer, the nouns agree in number.

Nouns also agree in  choice E , but one cannot tell whether the title or the dwelling is said to be free and clear.

Prateekj05 · Answer

"Whereas" is used to show contrast. 
"While" gives the idea of "at the same time".
(A), (B) and (E) are eliminated for this reason.
In (C), "Whereas" is modifying the entire clause and is correct. (D) is wrong for the same reason.

gmatconqueror2018 · Answer

Must compare like things and you are given owners in the non-underlined portion of the sentence. Therefore, eliminate A,B, and D. C is the correct answer because dwelling should be plural and in choice E, it is not. C is concise and clear and the meaning makes sense.

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ShaliniSingh · Answer

"owners of condominium apartments have" is parallel to "owners of cooperative apartments have". Whereas is used to express contrast.
Hence C is the correct answer

lary301254M7 · Answer

While the owner of a condominium apartment has free and clear title to the dwelling, owners of cooperative apartments have shares in a corporation that owns a building and leases apartments to them.

(A) While  the owner  of a condominium apartment has free and clear title to the dwelling,

(B)  The owner  of a condominium apartment has free and clear title to the dwelling, but

(C) Whereas  owners  of condominium apartments have free and clear title to their dwellings,

(D)  An owner  of a condominium apartment has free and clear title to the dwelling, whereas

(E) Condominium apartment  owners  have a title to their dwelling that is free and clear, while

To maintain parallelism while comparing two subjects, it is essential to make sure they are similar.
In this case, the latter part of the sentence has the subject " owners  of cooperative apartments".
So, we want to make sure the first part of the sentence also has a plural comparable subject.
(A), (B), (D) are gone.

Between (C) and (E), (C) has even better parallel structure. Whereas "owners of" ... , "owners of" ...

Ans: (C)

teaserbae · Answer

daagh  can you please brief the difference between dwellings and dwelling in C and E ?

daagh · Answer

teaser
'dwelling' is not correct in the given context. Each owner has his own dwelling and as such. all owners have their own dwellings. Otherwise, it looks as if all owners have one single title and one dwelling in E.

These are more contextual than formulaic.

At the same time, we can use the singular in spite of the plural subject. As in the following case, we say that all MDs have their own say in the conduct of the company and not their "says" (plural of say)

jaykpatel21 · Answer

A, B,  and  D  - comparing a single owner of a condominium with owners of cooperative apartments.
  E  -one cannot tell whether the title or the dwelling is said to be free and clear
  C  - the best answer, the nouns agree in number.

RohitSaluja · Answer

Hi  VeritasKarishma   EducationAisle

i know that we have better comparison b/w owners in option C and E ; hence A/B/D can be eliminated, but I wanted to check can we also eliminate option A and E for using "while"? Isn't "while" generally used to show events related with time?

KarishmaB · Answer

"While" can be used to give contrasting ideas too. Almost every word is used in multiple ways hence until and unless you are certain that some specific usage is incorrect, do not eliminate based on that.

EducationAisle · Answer

Hi Rohit,  this post  might help.

dhawalsachdeva · Answer

Hello,

I have a doubt that if Choice C is the correct answer then who does "them" in the non underlined portion refer to? Owners of Condominium or of cooperative apartments?

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EducationAisle · Answer

Logically,  them  should refer to  owners of cooperative apartments .

One could argue that the pronoun  them  is technically  ambiguous  here, since  them  has multiple eligible antecedents. However, pronoun  ambiguity  is almost  never  a deal-breaker in GMAT SC.

Pankaj0901 · Answer

Can you please explain why a single owner cannot be compared with multiple owners (OPTION A)? Is Option C (plural to plural comparison) BETTER than Option A (and hence we eliminate OPTION A), or is it that the comparison in OPTION A is illogical or non-sensical irrespective of the presence of OPTION C?

ExpertsGlobal5 · Answer

Hello  Pankaj0901 ,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, the use of the plural to plural comparison makes Option C a BETTER answer choice; the comparison in Option A is not incorrect.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team.

vivprakash · Answer

GMATNinja  pls help with this quesn.
My logic was, as the answer choices are very similar, the pronoun ambiguity of them can be used to differentiate.
Then option with singular should be selected to make it less ambiguous.

Thanks.

GMATNinja · Answer

This question is a few decades old, so don't worry about it too much. One thing to notice is that there's no good reason to compare a SINGLE condominium apartment owner to MULTIPLE cooperative apartment owners. You could argue that using the plural form for both makes the comparison a bit more clear: "owners of thing #1 have X, owners of thing #2 have Y". This structure is "parallel" and simple, so the comparison is very easy to follow. Also, having the "whereas" up front makes it clear that we should expect a contrast between the two parts -- and again, that helps keep things clear and simple. Those aren't particularly strong reasons, but that's probably what GMAC had in mind back in the late 80s or early 90s, when this question was first produced.

But again, this question is pretty darned old, so don't lose too much sleep over it!

While the owner of a condominium apartment has free and clear title to

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While the owner of a condominium apartment has free and clear title to

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