Rory Sutherland

We assume that this is a purely transactional exchange.

Maybe in a rational world, that's exactly what it would be.

But for one thing, actually, someone who's invested 15 years in doing up a house probably cares about what the person buying it is going to do to the house.

So my parents-in-law, for example, are fanatical gardeners.

Don't get into this.

Seriously, get into something like crack.

I don't think we have.

We have no worry that I'm going to.

Don't worry, you're going to become an enthusiastic.

Good, good, good.

Okay.

But I guarantee if you went and looked around their house and placed an offer while being an expert in botany and generally quoting people like Gertrude Jekyll and, you know, prominent garden designers and Sissinghurst and daddy, daddy, daddy, dad.

you could buy their house for 200,000 less than if you turned up and said, brilliant, we can knock down that tree and put in a helipad.

I think if you said we can knock down that tree and put in a carting track, right, I don't think they'd sell it to you at any price.

Richard Thaler did, I think, his most interesting work of all is actually on the concept of transaction utility.

which you may remember.

Do you remember this?

A little bit.

Yeah, it's in, I think it's in Nudge.

And the famous thought experiment is this, which I find fascinating.