REMEMBER THE furore when Sherry FitzGerald announced that it would be putting up its fees to 1.5 per cent because the slowing market meant it could no longer sustain the low fees created by the boom years?

The airwaves were full of punters complaining, but since then estate agents' fees have been quietly climbing, what with properties taking a lot longer to sell and vendors happy to pay more if they can shift their property.

Standard fees are now 1.5 per cent and upwards, while vendors at the upper end of the market are prepared to pay fees of at least 1 per cent, whereas in the boom years they might have argued for a flat fee that worked out at well below that level.

Though the fees are inching higher, Irish estate agents are still well behind their European counterparts.

At a recent real estate conference in Cannes the issue of fees was freely discussed, with snorts of amazement and derision around the floor as agents revealed their fees. These ranged from 1.5 per cent in Holland, to 2 per cent in Belgium; 3-5 per cent in Switzerland; and from 4 per cent in Italy to 6 per cent in France.

In Turkey the agent takes 3 per cent from the seller and another 3 per cent from the buyer, while in the US the realtor also gets a percentage from both sides. Agency commission rises to a whopping 8 per cent in Russia where the head of one estate agency federation admitted that an agent would consider it robbery if he or she were to get any less!