Why We Compare Apples to Oranges Without Realising It
Why do people often misunderstand unfamiliar cities and property markets? One reason is surprisingly simple: we naturally compare them with what we already know. In this edition of **Lessons From My Journey**, I share two real experiences that taught me an important lesson about perspective, value and why comparing size alone can sometimes lead us to the wrong conclusion. Before comparing two markets, make sure you're comparing apples to apples.
LESSONS FROM MY JOURNEY
KC
7/11/20262 min read
Over the years, I've realised that one of the biggest reasons people misunderstand a city is surprisingly simple.
We naturally compare unfamiliar places with the place we know best.
One day, a friend from Hong Kong visited one of my offices in another city.
On the journey from the airport to the hotel, he couldn't stop talking about the amount of empty land we passed.
He looked out of the window and kept saying,
"Why aren't they using all this land?"
I smiled because I understood exactly what he was seeing.
If you've spent most of your life in Hong Kong, seeing large plots of vacant land within a city feels unusual.
Hong Kong has limited developable land and a very different urban landscape.
But the city we were visiting was completely different.
The population was much smaller.
The city covered a much larger area.
There was still plenty of room for future expansion.
What looked unusual to him was perfectly normal to the local residents.
That conversation reminded me that we often evaluate a place using the rules of somewhere else.
A few years later, I experienced the opposite.
Another friend from Hong Kong invited me to visit his new home in a Southeast Asian city.
The house was around 5,000 square feet.
He was excited to show me around.
After the tour, he laughed and asked,
"Why don't you look surprised? Every friend from Hong Kong or Singapore who visits is amazed by the size."
I smiled and replied,
"Because I've travelled to many cities across Southeast Asia, and houses of this size are actually quite common. Apart from Singapore, this isn't unusual."
I wasn't trying to downplay his achievement.
I was simply looking at it from a different perspective.
That experience taught me another important lesson.
People love comparing size.
But size alone tells us very little about value.
A larger house isn't automatically a better investment.
Just as a smaller apartment isn't automatically a worse one.
The more meaningful question is:
What is the market value of that land?
What creates the demand?
What makes it scarce?
How easy will it be to sell in the future?
Imagine you had the same amount of money.
You could buy one kilogram of gold, or around sixty kilograms of silver.
Which one do you think would be easier to sell many years from now?
Most people wouldn't compare the weight.
They would compare the value.
Property should be viewed in much the same way.
A large house doesn't automatically create more value.
Neither does a smaller property automatically create less value.
The important question isn't,
"How big is it?"
The better question is,
"What gives it value?"
Final Thoughts
One lesson I've learnt from travelling is this.
We all compare unfamiliar places with the places we already know.
There is nothing wrong with that.
It's simply human nature.
But before making a judgement, it is worth asking ourselves one simple question.
"Am I comparing apples to apples?"
Sometimes, changing the question changes the answer.
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