Hi there Carol, I live outside Australia and have found it difficult to look for property so I engaged the services of a 'buyer's' agent in Sydney's northern beaches. My experience was extremely disappointing.  I'm not sure if this is how it works with all companies but mine charged me an upfront retainer of approx AUD$3,500 to start a supposedly 6mth long search (based on broad criteria I gave them, eg 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom, balcony, garage, area, etc) and then, once a suitable property had been found and purchased,  they would also receive a much bigger fee. For a property of around $1mio, this larger fee was in the order of AUD$20,000 and it increased as the property value increased – hmm, sound familiar?  Initially I was told how much benefit I would derive from their inside knowledge of the market (they were all ex-real estate agents) and news of upcoming property listings yet to be released to the general public. In reality they never once showed me a property that I hadn't already seen myself on realestate.com.au. 

I made a visit to Sydney for 1 week about 2-3mths in to the '6mth period' to see some properties first hand for myself. The company took me to a property which fulfilled the broad criteria which I had specified (ie it had 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a garage and a balcony). Upon inspection I didn't like the property and informed them I wouldn't be taking it further and asked them to continue the search. The next day I was in Melbourne and received a call from the company's manager asking me, very rudely, why I didn't want to buy this property –  after all, it had fulfilled my criteria. Forgetting for the moment the obvious fact that just because a property has 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms you may not want to buy it (we are talking about AUD$1mio after all) and that I would ultimately be paying this company $20,000 if a purchase did go through (and would therefore expect an exemplary level of service from them, rather than nagging pressure and rude phone calls), the bottom line is these buyer's agents get paid most of their fee once you purchase a property. Therefore, like normal real-estate agents, they have the greatest incentive for you to buy something, and buy as quick as possible. I understand that not all buyer's agents would be like this, but I urge you to be very sceptical about the idea that they truly work FOR you. They want you to buy SOMETHING, and that is ALL. As regards my own situation, after the said phone call from the company manager, in which I made it very clear what my thoughts on him and the situation were, I received a couple more half-hearted e-mails with more property listings (all of which I had already seen on the internet) then, with 2.5months still to run on my '6mth search period' didn't hear from them again. Remember I had already paid them AUD$3,500 for them to search for 6mths.  

In retrospect, I actually think AUD $3,500 was a cheap lesson – personally I would never use one of these agents again. I would suggest you save the exorbitant fees and get some friends to take some photos of something you see and like on realestate.com.au or a similar web page. 
 
I hope that helps.

Tim