Housing analyst: short sales hurting economic recovery

Are short sales bad for the speedy recovery of the Las Vegas housing market? That’s the concern of Las Vegas housing market analyst Dennis Smith, president of Home Builders Research. Smith pointed out that of the 22,588 listings on the Multiple Listing Service in August, 8,859 were under contract and 80 percent of those were contingent on short-sale approval. Thirty-two percent of the single-family home closings on the list were short sales, Smith said. “What I have said all along is short sales are like a weight hanging over our head, a cloud that is covering the sky, and we can’t get rid of it,” Smith said. In essence, short sales are holding back the housing recovery, Smith said.