Buyer agents' chatter revealing what's really going on behind housing stats?

The Massachusetts Association of Realtors releases housing statistics for the second quarter of 2005 today.   Since that's the strongest season of the year, it will mostly likely give home buyers the wrong impression about what really going on in the local housing market.  For that, you need to listen to the chatter between real estate professionals, particularly buyer agents on their own password protected mail lists (something you can't do ;-).  There, buyer agents in different areas have already begun asking their peers if they are also seeing a new phenomena in the market:  houses selling for below their appraised value.  That's right, not below their asking price, but below their appraised value.  That either means that those lucky homebuyers just made money on their purchase (the difference between their purchase price and the appraised value of the property) because they were smart enough to use a REAL buyer agent, or that prices are already falling but that emerging trend has yet to appear in statistics.  Time will tell if these are isolated incidents or not.  In the meantime, put MAR's upcoming stats into seasonal context or a longer timeframe.  Some argue the 2nd quarter statistics may reflect the top of the market, and years from now will be regarded as a turning point before the housing industry slid into a multi-year recession.