This study provides a survey of the housing and mortgage market policies applied between 1976 and 1994 in Chile. These policies are implemented within the framework of a free-market economy in which the state plays a subsidiary role in the economic affairs of the nation. Of particular importance to the housing sector have been the elimination of interest rate and rent controls, the elimination of a specialized housing finance system, and the consistent application of an indexation scheme that preserves the real value of monetary contracts and that allows investors the recovery of their funds with a competitive real return.