Cuba Eases 52-Year Old Home Ownership Restrictions

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(MIAMI, FL) -- Raul Castro, Fidel's brother, has just made a significant move to open up Cuba's real estate market.

Since 1959, Cubans have had to go through months, if not years, of wading through local government bureaucracies, mountains of paperwork and even corruption in the forms of pay-offs to get approval to buy or sell a piece of property in Cuba.

Cubans who moved abroad also had their homes confiscated by the Cuban government as well.

But all that is about to change.

Cuba's new home ownership rules state that the purchase, sale, donation or trading of homes in Cuba would be recognized and allowed without government approval in cases of divorce, death or permanent departure from Cuba.

These home ownership changes were approved by Cuba's National Assembly back in April, and are about to go into effect November 10, 2011.

It is believed by many that Cubans living abroad in the US, mainly in Miami, who have remitted as much as $1 billion a year back into Cuba to help relatives, will start investing in Cuba's housing market via their relatives, which will stimulate Cuba's property markets over the next few years.

Reaction to Cuba's property policy move was swift in Miami.

Veteran Caribbean and Latin American real estate consultant David Pearson tells the World Property Channel, "Of course the unanswered 'million-dollar' question that is most critical to those of us in South Florida is what happens to all the private property that Castro expropriated in 1959?  That includes not only thousands of residences, but also sugar mills, textile factories, ranches and farms all over Cuba.  International law calls for just compensation to the owner when a government expropriates his property.  If the Cuban government is serious in its apparent intent to put real estate back into the free market, it will embark on a plan to identify and compensate those whose land it confiscated."

Pearson further states, "Another unanswered question is, will the Cuban property owners be able to sell their land to foreigners, i.e., non-Cubans?  Until now, foreign developers like the Spanish resort hotels in Varadero Beach have always had to have the government as a partner."

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