This question tests your understanding of participles and parallel structure in sentences. The sentence describes what "they need": houses that are clean, well-____, and reasonably-_____.

The key is to recognize that the words filling the blanks are adjectives describing the noun "houses". The words "clean", "well-____", and "reasonably-_____" must be parallel in structure, meaning they should all be adjectives.

Let's analyze the options:

Step 1: Understand the words

• Equip (verb): To supply with the necessary items.
• Price (verb): To set the cost of something.

Step 2: Form the adjectives

We need to turn these verbs into adjectives. We do this by using their past participles.

• The past participle of "equip" is equipped. A "well-equipped house" is a house that has been supplied with good facilities.
• The past participle of "price" is priced. A "reasonably-priced house" is a house whose cost has been set at a reasonable level.

These past participles function as adjectives.

Step 3: Eliminate incorrect options

• equipping / pricing: These are present participles (verb forms ending in -ing). They are used to describe an ongoing action (e.g., "The man is equipping the house"), not to describe the state of the noun itself. They do not fit as adjectives here.
• equipped / pricing: This mixes an adjective ("equipped") with a verb form ("pricing"), breaking the parallel structure. "Reasonably-pricing houses" is grammatically incorrect.
• equipping / priced: This also breaks the parallel structure by mixing a verb form ("equipping") with an adjective ("priced"). "Well-equipping houses" is grammatically incorrect.

Step 4: Identify the correct answer

The only option that uses the correct adjective forms (past participles) and maintains parallel structure is equipped / priced.

Final Answer: What they need is clean, well-equipped, and reasonably-priced houses.

Related Topics & Formulae

Participles: A participle is a form of a verb that is used as an adjective. The two types are:

• Present Participle: Ends in -ing (e.g., a boring lecture, a running tap).
• Past Participle: Usually ends in -ed, -d, -t, -en, or -n (e.g., a equipped kitchen, a broken window, a written test).

Parallelism (Parallel Structure): This is a grammar rule that states that similar ideas in a sentence must be expressed in the same grammatical form. In this case, the list of adjectives ("clean", "well-equipped", "reasonably-priced") all follow the same pattern.