In spite of its significance, many households (especially in developing countries) are denied
access to decent housing as a result of lack of access to suitable forms of credit for housing
investment. This paper therefore examined those problems that restrict household access to
housing finance in Southwestern Nigeria. Primary data were collected with two sets of
questionnaires administered on lenders and borrowers. The sample comprised 170 lenders and
327 borrowers randomly drawn from sample frames of 234 lenders and 467 borrowers. The
study showed that in rank order, the three most important problems to lenders were high interest
rate and inflation, fund mobilization and affordability while to borrowers, they were high
interest rate and inflation, fund mobilization and title deed. Besides the proportion method, data
were also analysed by means of two other methods – Relative Importance Index and Principal
Component Analysis and they showed comparable results. The study concluded that high
interest rate and inflation was the most significant problem affecting housing financing in
Southwestern Nigeria. The implication of this is that interest rate and inflation must be seen as
very crucial in policies on home ownership, housing finance and delivery which should be
properly managed to promote availability and accessibility.