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Bob Graham is executive editor at Insurance & Financial Advisor and IFAwebnews.com.

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It seems to be buying season, with perennial agency buyers Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. and Brown & Brown, as well as Richmond, Va.-based Markel getting in the game.

A wave of sales of agencies have been taking place in recent weeks after what I see as a relatively slow year for insurance agency mergers and acquisitions.

Of course, the activity of 2011 far exceeds the demand of the prior two years, when sales of agencies were as rare as the passage of a federal law helping agency owners. (See some recent insurance agency sales.)

Sources say insurance agency valuations are way off from the boom days of the mid-2000s. The prices being paid show the same degradation as most home values, those sources say. However, since the sale price of most insurance agencies is private, much of the discussion of value is mere speculation.

More pens could hit paper in the last two weeks of this year, as agency owners decide to take their money and run, even if it’s less money than they had hoped. The same push to get it on this year’s books fuels buyers.