Final answer:
The claim by the real estate agency is that the mean home sales price in City A is the same as in City B. The null hypothesis is H0: μA = μB, and the alternative hypothesis is Ha: μA ≠ μB. A two-sample z-test at alpha = 0.01 is used to test the hypothesis.
Step-by-step explanation:
To determine if there is enough evidence to reject the real estate agency's claim that the mean home sales price in City A is the same as in City B at an alpha level of 0.01, we must first identify the claim and state the null hypothesis (H0) and the alternative hypothesis (Ha).
The claim made by the agency corresponds to option C: The mean home sales price in City A is the same as in City B. Based on this claim, the null hypothesis would be H0: μA = μB, where μA is the mean sales price in City A and μB is the mean sales price in City B. The alternative hypothesis, which represents the opposite of the claim, would be Ha: μA ≠ μB, indicating the means are not equal.
To test the hypothesis, we would perform a two-sample z-test since the population standard deviations are known. If the calculated p-value from the test is less than the significance level of 0.01, we have enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis in favor of the alternative.