ethics." K. apologized. The conversation turned to other, more mundane issues. After ten minutes, as the conversation was ending, the agent told K., "Let me say one last thing. My client is willing to sell this house for a lot less than you might think." Based on this conversation, K. then offered $425,000 for the house instead of the $450,000 he had planned to offer. In the end, the seller accepted $430,000. Thanks to his own agents intervention, the seller lost at least $20,000. The agent, meanwhile, only lost $300-a small price to pay to ensure that she would quickly and eas- ily lock up the sale, which netted her a commission of $6,450. So a big part of a real-estate agents job, it would seem, is to per- suade the homeowner to sell for less than he would like while at the same time letting potential buyers know that a house can be bought for less than its listing price. To be sure, there are more subtle means of doing so than coming right out and telling the buyer to bid low. The study of real-estate agents cited above also includes data that reveals how agents convey information through the for-sale ads they write. A phrase like "well maintained," for instance, is as full of meaning to an agent as "Mr. Ayak" was to a Klansman; it means that a house is old but not quite falling down. A savvy buyer will know this (or find out for himself once he sees the house), but to the sixty-five-year-old re- tiree who is selling his house, "well maintained" might sound like a compliment, which is just what the agent intends. An analysis of the language used in real-estate ads shows that certain words are powerfully correlated with the final sale price of FREAK ONOMIC S   a house. This doesnt necessarily mean that labeling a house "well maintained" causes it to sell for less than an equivalent house. It does, however, indicate that when a real-estate agent labels a house "well maintained," she is subtly encouraging a buyer to bid low.