Because if you knew what you were doing, lots of stuff was going well over asking price. So "getting full asking price" did not mean you weren't potentially leaving money on the table.
As I posted: "I called in the top realtor in the area. I went over the house , comps etc. and came up with a selling price. "
So I think it was reasonable for me to assume that he knew what he was doing when he came up with "a selling price"
Of course my net would have been 94% of that.
That said I took the 2nd highest bidder (the one I thought would have the least problems closing) and ended up 3% over asking.
So even if he managed to realize, as you posted, that "lots of stuff was going well over asking price" (and why wouldn't he know that from the get-go?) there was 6% to overcome plus the additional 3% I got over asking.
Realize that all this happened over perhaps a 3 week period (not including time to closing).
I was selling a quantity of 1 house, that I was not living in, was paying insurance and taxes on and loosing opportunity cost on the future sale proceeds.
I'm not saying that employing a realtor is wrong, but given the circumstances for me, I think I received a close to optimal return on my efforts.