Poland is a country where economic transformation contributed significantly to the structure and activity level of the housing market. One of the examples of adjustment to the market rules in the housing provision was the appearance of new actors developers. They became responsible for the creation of a significant part of new supply of housing stock. The financing of housing projects realized by developers is based partly on pre-payment of buyers. The special circumstances of transforming post-socialist economy - mainly in the form of lack of fair play among entrepreneurs - developers and ignorance of the rules governing the economy and housing market by their clients, created a clear opportunity to shift a substantial part of the risk to the clients. This situation creates enormous problems in the case of insolvency of the developer. The legal protection of developer clients in Poland has been expanded recently by the new act (in force: April 2012). The authors attempt to assess the potential impact of new legislation from the point of view of institutional environment of housing market in Poland having the outline of developer clientsí protection in selected Western countries.