After some inertia during the early 1990s, transition countries have made progress inC in the past 15 years. Developing housing finance has been an important policy goal in order to revive construction activity, which had collapsed in the initial years of transition. Additional construction activity is needed in order to catch up with housing consumption in Western economies, upgrade and modernize the building stock and in order to address the strong regional mismatches resulting from migration. A secondary goal has been to liquefy capital locked in the housing stock that was privatized at the time.