The availability heuristic explains why a vivid image can outweigh a statistic, whether the image is a collision or a broker with three brochures
How People Read Risk: A Junction in Shoreditch and a Showroom in Cebu
The availability heuristic explains why a vivid image can outweigh a statistic, whether the image is a collision or a broker with three brochures
By Harper-Thames, Shoreditch correspondent
Two Pictures
Consider two images. The first is a junction in Shoreditch where, according to TfL, there were 14 collisions in the three years to 30 June 2024, one of them fatal for a pedestrian in 2022 (TfL newsroom). The second is a broker in Cebu alone in a showroom with three brochures and a cold coffee, from a Manila News report on slow condominium sales.
Both are vivid, and both are real in the sense that someone reported them. The question is what they tell us.
The Heuristic
the Tversky and Kahneman work on the availability heuristic holds that people judge how likely something is by how easily examples come to mind. A dramatic image is easy to recall, so it feels common. A quiet statistic is hard to recall, so it feels rare. The result is that people overestimate dramatic risks and underestimate dull ones.
For the junction, the effect works in a particular way. A fatal collision is memorable, and local people remember it. But TfL’s numbers show a genuine pattern of harm, not just a memorable event, so the vivid image and the statistic agree. The concern is justified, and the proposals are a response to it.
For the Showroom
For the showroom the situation is different. Philippine authorities have been examining allegations about Thomas Markle Sr., who lived in Cebu until earlier this year, as GMA News and the Guardian have reported. The allegations are unproven and no charges have been filed. Child protection is a serious matter, and I make no joke about it. The market story that followed is a separate thing: brokers say buyers have become hesitant.
Here the vivid image may be doing more work than the data. Colliers named the Visayas and Mindanao a key property investment hotspot in July. A lone broker is easier to picture than the units that sold. The reported slowdown is real, but its size and cause are not established by one image.
What Each Case Teaches
The junction shows that a vivid image can point to a real problem, and that acting on it can be right. The showroom shows that a vivid image can make a market look worse than the evidence supports. The test in both cases is the same: look for the numbers behind the picture.
For the junction, the numbers are the collisions. For the market, they would be sales per month, prices per square metre and the number of listings. I have the first and not the second, which is a good reason to be careful about the second.
A Practical Test
When you read a news story about a place or a risk, ask three questions. What is the source of the number? How big is the sample? What would the story look like if the picture were not so vivid? If a story gives no figures, treat it as an impression.
The same test applies to a retiree thinking about a move. The paperwork described in the London Prat, two referees and a letter from the vicar, at https://prat.uk/cebu-estate-agents-demand-character-references/, is a comic exaggeration of a real wish for reassurance. The sensible response is to take legal advice, read the Condominium Act and the terms from the Philippine Retirement Authority, and visit more than once.
The Legal Frame
Under the Condominium Act foreigners may own units but not land, capped at 40 percent of a project. The Philippine Retirement Authority sets out the retirement terms. These are the facts that do not change with the headlines.
The sea, as a vendor in the story is said to have remarked, did nothing wrong. Nor, to be fair, did the junction. Both are what people have built around them.
Why It Matters in Shoreditch
Local journalism lives on images: a junction, a closing pub, a tower. Readers respond to them, and they should. But a good local story also gives the numbers, and a good reader asks for them.
I hope this column has done both. If the junction is made safer and the showroom fills, I will be pleased on both counts.
Property Nerves, Seen From Elsewhere
Fear of a market travels fast. The same jitters turn up in the comic dispatches on the Cebu condominium story: a Manila News report on a Mactan broker with three brochures, a London Prat account of the references demanded of British retirees (direct link: https://prat.uk/cebu-estate-agents-demand-character-references/) and a Bohiney piece on two-hour open houses. Read them for the human detail a market report leaves out. The wider network is at prat.uk and bohiney.com.
Note: Philippine authorities are examining unproven allegations about Thomas Markle Sr., who lived in Cebu until earlier this year, as GMA News and the Guardian have reported. No charges have been filed. Child protection is a serious matter; the jokes here are about a property market and the paperwork.
For the lighter side of the news, there is always The Daily Mash.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/cebu-realtor-cant-sell-beachfront-listings/