Foreword by Ken Deshaies

In 1980, Alvin Toffler published The Third Wave, a groundbreaking book describing how we’d moved from an agricultural economy through an industrial economy and were moving into an economy driven by electronics. He first coined the term “the electronic cottage” as the workplace of the future, emphasizing that many jobs could and would be done from home, that this work/home could be anywhere. I have lived to see this transition, and in fact, have sold homes in our semi-remote mountain communities to people whose corporate headquarters were half a continent away. 

In 2005, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy was published, in which the authors describe how the major business successes over time have come from re-imagining the business at hand. Innovative leaders who could see beyond the ordinary have redesigned normal businesses, and even entire industries, because their vision and knowledge prompted them to seek and implement solutions that had not been considered. From companies such as Cirque de Soleil reinventing the circus as pure entertainment to Curves for Women creating an entirely new fitness environment, brave and courageous innovators have brought creativity, refinement and rich content to our lives. 

Both of these books were simply observations of reality, but they codified the real world in ways that helped their readers understand better the world around them. Mollie Wasserman’s Ripping the Roof Off Real Estate does the same for the real estate industry that these book did for business in general. Through her observations of the relationships between real estate brokers and their consumer clients, she has created a “blue ocean strategy” and offered it to those in her industry with similar vision.

I anticipate that, because it is human nature to resist ideas, the adoption of her model will be slow in the beginning. The first sentence of Toffler’s book is, “A new civilization is emerging in our lives, and blind men everywhere are trying to suppress it.” I expect early responses to Mollie’s model will offer the same blindness. But, since it provides a better – win/win – solution for both real estate agents and their clients, I also expect it to catch on. 

There has been much written and spoken, online, at conventions, in industry publications, about real estate commissions and the pressures created on them by the proliferation of Internet-savvy consumers, national aggregators and discounters. Rather than take the position offered by many of devising arguments for protecting any standard commission schedule, Mollie wisely suggests offering alternatives. It all depends on who accepts the risk in any transaction. As a consumer, you can ask your agent to shoulder it entirely, share the risk, or take it all yourself. Each alternative offers a different type of compensation, and the selection can be done with open eyes, full knowledge and no surprises. 

As a Realtor®, I have worked with clients who felt my commissions should be cut because their particular transaction seemed simple. They did not understand that for every successful transaction, there are five where my time was spent unsuccessfully – people change their minds, life circumstances change, or a buyer becomes disqualified. But, the work done for each who did not buy or sell was done for free. Our only payment is on successful deals. Consumers whose goals and abilities are clear, however, can engage a qualified agent for less if they are willing to shoulder the risk of compensation for representation. They can have a choice. And so can the agent. Welcome to the new face of real estate.