At the downtown bazaar, Valdez holds court on a concrete bench, keeping track of real estate offers in a tattered notebook and on posterboard that he tapes to a tree.
Many enlist the services of "runners" like Manuel Valdez, an 83-year-old ex-military man who has been brokering the transactions for four decades. Or they can head to the open-air real-estate market in hopes of negotiating a "permuta," which officially is a swap of equal-value properties but in reality usually involves illegal cash on the side. They can enroll in cooperative construction projects, build on existing properties or join the long waiting list for government housing. While they wait for the new law to be enacted and the specifics to be announced, Cubans have few legal options. Many of those still standing are merely facades or are propped up by scaffolding and wooden beams.
Empty lots dot the capital's seaside Malecon boulevard as once-stately mansions regularly collapse following heavy rains. Meanwhile, cyclones and salty air can start eating through metal bars in a year and have decimated rural shanties and older quarters of Havana. embargo choked off the supply of building materials, and new construction failed to keep pace with demand. The government, Castro preached, would provide everything a citizen could need: employment, food, education and housing, all for little or no money at all.īut the housing stock, already run down before the revolution, continued to deteriorate, the U.S. Most who have left the island forfeited their properties to the state. "They want expatriate Cubans to contribute money to the Cuban state, and this is one big incentive for people who want to help their families."īut few changes are likely to be as complex and hard to implement as real estate reform.įrom the earliest days of the revolution, Fidel Castro railed against exploitative, absentee landlords, and enacted a reform that gave property ownership to whoever lived in a home, regardless of who held title.
"All these things are tied in," said Sergio Diaz-Briquets, a U.S.-based demography expert. It's also likely to suck up more hard currency from Cubans abroad who can be counted on to send their families cash to buy, expand and remodel homes, especially since President Barack Obama relaxed the 50-year-old economic embargo to allow unlimited remittances by Cuban-Americans. It would attack corruption by officials who accept bribes to sign off on illicit deals, and give people options to seek peaceful resolutions to black-market disputes that occasionally erupt into violence. President Raul Castro has pledged to legalize the purchase and sale of homes by the end of the year, bringing this informal market out of the shadows as part of an economic reform package under which Cuba is already letting islanders go into business for themselves in 178 designated activities, as restaurateurs, wedding planners, plumbers, carpenters.Īn aboveboard housing market promises multiple benefits for the cash-strapped island: It would help ease a housing crunch, stimulate construction employment and generate badly needed tax revenue.