Thanks for the reply Buddyboy. I'm wondering if you got someone to call the agent when your property was on sale to check their trustworthiness? Also 1% sounds like a good deal (thought it was around 2%). In retrospect would you employ an estate agent to sell a property today?
I didn't get anyone to call, as it was all done in the space of a few weeks. It was a standard 3 bed semi in an estate, so it was easy to gauge the going rate. The stamp duty cutoff was 317,000, so that was the max it would realistically fetch, which it did.
This was a while ago, and we negotiated 1% as it was during the (last) boom, and houses were selling themselves.
If I was selling my current house, would I use an estate agent? Good question. With the likes of myhome.ie and the ability to post up videos etc., I would be tempted to sell it myself. The only downside would be having to organise the viewings. But that could be arranged. So, say my house would sell for €500k. The agent would charge €10k (based on 2%). Plus probably advertising fees etc. For that sort of money, I would definitely do it myself. Especially since everything in on-line now.
Also I think there have been a couple of threads on here discussing that some properties appear to be for sale, to satisfy the bank, but realistically aren't. I wish you luck.