This thesis analyzes the evolution of the Housing Financing System (SFH) in Brazil, focusing on the characteristics of the mortgages and on the subsidies given to borrowers. Homebuyers were given large subsidies that led to the breakdown of the system in the following decades. Using case studies, the main factors that gave rise to those subsidies are identified and classified into three groups: failures in the structure of the financial plans, contract renegotiations offered from 1983 through 1985, and macroeconomic stabilization plans launched in the second half of the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. The individual contributions of each factor for the overall subsidies are estimated. It is also shown that subsidies had a very perverse distributional effect, since high-debt holders received proportionally larger subsidies. There was a transfer of wealth from society as a whole to homebuyers, from the poorest to the richest, and from those who did not own a house to homeowners.