Abstract
This article contextualizes the "market transition debate" on the ongoing institutional transformation of former state socialist societies by examining the system of housing inequalities in Hungary three years before the regime change. It demonstrates that, by then, the differentiation of private housing ownership had already been so advanced that the private-public distinction hides important institutional variation within "private" ownership. As an alternative, we provide a four-category emic model of housing institutions for Hungary. The analysis shows that the rules of access to housing were quite differentiated by settlement type. Hence, the redistributive predominance of the socialist state weakens as we move from the urban to the rural context. Finally, we present empirical evidence that informal social network resources play a distinct role in structuring access to such significant assets as housing.