Main difference between an estate agent here and in Sweden is that an estate agent in Sweden is legally responsible for compiling (or making sure) there is an accurate information pack for the property and to broker the deal between seller and buyer (the actual contract is signed by the seller and the buyer, the broker isn’t signing; though it’s usually done at the bank or at the broker’s office).

At least in Sweden, it’s been known for people to sell without a broker involved, though that means at least one of the parties need to do some legal legwork to get all title deeds signed over properly (without that, the buy falls through and any and all money exchanged needs to be returned). I think a solicitor is needed here, but I haven’t checked.

In Australia, the agent works for the vendor, and the buyer has no agent. The buyer usually enlists the help of a solicitor (and/or other professionals to carry out inspections/surveys, etc) to make sure she doesn’t get screwed over. The vendor’s real estate agent gets a commission, and the buyer’s solicitor just charges a fee.

In Canada, there are two agents, one for the vendor and one for the buyer. They halve the commission, roughly speaking. Each party has a solicitor but the solicitor doesn’t do as much as she would (for the buyer, at least) in Australia. The whole buyers’ agent thing seemed to tie in very well with the MLS system; I presume they evolved together.

This is different from Sweden, where (in general) a single property broker will act as a middleman on behalf of both buyer and seller and take a cut out of the pie.