Absurd Real Estate Advice

The day was February 13, 2005. We had placed our house on the market in early January, and we had shown it to a total of 3 couples. The problem: We had discovered a beautiful ranch-style house with a pool during our own house hunting. However, we had to sell our house before we could even consider moving into our dream home. Enter the real estate agent who gets things done. We met with him about the reasons that no one was even interested in our house. He suggested a few things to market the house better. It was a 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath with 1400 square feet. Totally unremarkable in anyway, it was, nevertheless, the home where we had raised our 3 sons. There was a large, sloping, fenced-in backyard, and worn grass where we had played baseball, soccer, football, tag, and any other game which required running around. The final suggestion that we received from our agent was to RAISE the price of the home to allow a higher commission to be paid to any agent who happened to sell this home to his or clients. I was shocked, to say the least. I mean, we were already asking for DOUBLE the price that we had paid for the house almost 10 years earlier. He told us to trust him though, and that is just what we did. 2 weeks later, we had a young couple sign a contract on the house, with closing in late March. The lesson we learned from this was to trust the real estate agent, no matter how absurd or ridiculous the advice.