"This isn't socialism -- it's abuse and nonsense," said Briceno, an MIT grad. He said the national home builders association is protesting the order this week before the Supreme Court. "It's a populist attempt to pit the have-nots against the haves."

The mostly low- to middle-income buyers at Briceno's Yucatan sub-division paid cash at the start of construction, but promised to pay adjustments for inflation between purchase and move-in, a common sales practice here. The clause is designed to protect builders against rising material and labor costs, but Public Works & Housing Minister Diosdado Cabello has accused the construction industry of abusing the practice, and this month he ordered builders to refund the inflation charges.

Venezuela's inflation rate over the last two years has topped 40%. With an average final price of $30,000 per unit at his Yucatan subdivision here, Briceno says, returning the inflation charge to his 2,000 buyers could bankrupt him.

The increasingly difficult climate for home builders and the inability of the Chavez government to deliver on promises to build enough apartments and houses have led to a housing deficit now estimated at 2 million units. One survey recently rated Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, as the most expensive city in Latin America for foreign executives, in large part because of skyrocketing rents caused by the housing shortage.

Chavez has presented several plans to address the problem, and has often said housing should be controlled by the government. He recently announced a new kind of low- income housing to be financed by oil revenue. Still, private industry built 45,600 units last year, twice as many as the government.

Miguel Tinker Salas, a history professor at Pomona College, cited abuses in the home-building industry's practice of buyers paying in advance and then having to pay more later for inflation. "Undoubtedly, the construction companies need to recoup cost increases, but with little control over the process, some companies have also used the system to increase profits," Tinker Salas said.

Cabello, the Chavez minister who issued the decree requiring builders to refund the inflation adjustments, said his office recently has received 1,700 complaints from home buyers about excessive mark-ups for inflation.