This report highlights the importance of housing finance and focuses on ways to provide a more reliable supply of residential mortgage credit over the long term. It addresses the need for changes in the legal and regulatory structure governing the operations of private housing finance specialists; the implications of such changes for the overall supply and cost of mortgage credit; the importance of thrift institutions as a continuing source of mortgage finance; and ways to encourage diversified institutions such as commercial banks, pension funds, insurance companies, and finance companies to invest more heavily in residential mortgages.

The Commission believes that the steps recommended in this document are important ingredients of a well-rounded national housing policy that will help develop a new framework for the delivery of funds to finance the housing needs of the 1980s. However, this preliminary report does not purport to present a complete framework, and further study is underway on a number of other issues that will be discussed in the Commission's Final Report. Also, because the focus of this report is essentially long term, the Commission has appointed a Committee on Present Housing Issues to address the short-term problems of housing finance.

This report is part of the collection of scanned historical documents available to the public.