#6 - The construction of new apartments in Brewsterville

[Administrator]

Please post below with any questions!

[fersian]

I understand the supply & demand aspect of answer choice 'E', but I'm not seeing how answer choice 'B' is incorrect?
If new apartments are more desirable, then they could have higher rent. You see this all the time in real life.
Perhaps its wrong because you have to use add your own assumptions to make it more plausible?

[Dave Killoran]

I understand the supply & demand aspect of answer choice 'E', but I'm not seeing how answer choice 'B' is incorrect?
If new apartments are more desirable, then they could have higher rent. You see this all the time in real life.
Perhaps its wrong because you have to use add your own assumptions to make it more plausible?

Hi Fersian,

Thanks for the question! You do indeed see the scenario you mentioned all the time, and the test makers played on that knowledge in creating this question. In the stimulus, they are careful to specify which apartments are being examined: "increasing the supply of available housing leads to lower rents for existing apartments...rents for existing apartments rose." So while (B) explains why new apartment prices might have risen, it doesn't address the existing apartments. A very smooth move on their part, but one they make often. The trick here is to carefully track and note how they qualify or limit their claims. In this case, they didn't just say "all apartments," but limited it to "existing apartments," and that made all the difference!

Please let me know if that helps. Thanks!

[fersian]

Thank you! That makes much more sense. I guess I must have skimmed over that very important detail

[frk215]

Hello! For #6 I actually chose E as well but I found this question a bit confusing because none of the answer choices really jumped out at me. I understand how E is correct but when I was reading it, it felt like the answer dependent on an assumption about the supply of housing available and population. Specifically in that since there was a trend of more people needing housing in that town, though the supply of housing increased, the ratio of people to houses actually shifted so even with more housing there was a greater increase in population relative to the increase in housing. Thus, in the format of this ratio, rent for existing apartments increased.

I understand that this is a second family question so it would make sense that new info is allowed (of course) but applying that assumption still felt like the answer might be leaping a little bit. My question is the following: is this an assumption im legally allowed to make in the LSAT universe? Is there a way for me to more swiftly cut through to the right answer, because this took me a solid minute and a half to two minutes?

Thank you so much!

[Adam Tyson]

Not only are you allowed to make that assumption, frk215, you are expected to do so in this case. The authors of the LSAT are pretty good about keeping outside knowledge out of the equation, but they do expect us to have certain basic knowledge of how the world works and to apply that to cases like this. We are supposed to know that if the sun is shining, it's daytime. We are supposed to know that living beings need food, water, air, and shelter to survive. We are supposed to understand certain basic facts about predator/prey relations and the nature/nurture debate. And they have determined that a basic understanding of supply and demand is part of that knowledge base that they consider to be fair game to test us on. And that happens to be one of their favorite themes to test in Resolve the Paradox questions! In fact, it was discussed in some detail in a recent podcast episode, found here:

https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/lsat-p ... questions/

This answer choice falls into the general category of "something outside of what we were told occurred to cause this unusual situation to arise." It's a lot like the Foamy Soda question Dave talks about in that podcast, where causes beyond those discussed (a price reduction in that case) impacted the outcome in an unexpected way.

Be on the lookout for answers that discuss broader economic factors, weather and environmental factors, and issues related to data analysis and collection. Those are the source of many good Resolve answers!