Housing, as the principal focus of personal and family life, has a pervasive impact on all aspects of our existence, providing privacy and security, both physical and emotional, while embodying not only our material possessions, but also our dreams and despair. For most households in developing countries, financing housing constitutes a substantial proportion of household expenditure. Most research on housing finance focuses on measures of affordability and establishment of formal institutions. Others restrict their field of inquiry to the implementation of micro-credit facilities for incremental housing by lower income groups. Due to successive failures of public housing in many developing countries, strategies advocated by the global community tend towards diverting State involvement from provision to facilitation effective regulatory mechanisms deemed essential to enable private enterprise and informal practices in housing provision. Maldives experienced rapid economic growth during the last decades propelled by the expansion of tourism Yet, economic and social disparities between the capital, Male, and other islands continue to exist Consequently, in-migration to Male has fuelled an insatiable demand for housing. In the absence of formal housing finance, plot-holders in Male cannot construct multi storey housing that optimised land scarcity. This research focuses on the process by which private developers rent land from plot-holders to construct multi-storey rental housing, resulting in: income and shelter security for plot-holders increase in housing stock of Male and accumulation of capital for developers, with minimal State involvement or institutional support. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from renters, plot-holders and developers through purposive sampling. Based on the ideological perspective of rational choice theory, grounded theory methodology was utilised to develop a substantive theory on housing finance that. in situations of absolute scarcity of land, and low levels of ...