A dream for sale: the commercialization of houses from the Minha Casa

Abstract Historically, in Brazil, the government’s actions regarding the housing agenda have been based on the home ownership ideology, opening up a possibility, even though irregular, for commercialization. This article analyzes the context of the sale of houses from the Minha Casa Minha Vida Program – range 1 (2009 to 2020). The methodological procedures include monitoring of advertisements, access to the notification control database of the federal bank Caixa Econômica Federal, and land use mapping of housing units. This research’s contribution is that it analyzes those processes in different analytical scales – federation unit (state of Rio Grande do Norte), metropolitan region of Natal, and medium-sized city (Mossoró) – with the same methodological approach.