Returning Cubans boost island’s real estate market

AN estimated 40,000 Cubans have returned from abroad since 2013, lured home by government migration reform that made it easier for expat Cubans to come home and buy property. Once derided as the lowest of low “worms” for having left Cuba, now - flush with cash - they are being welcomed home with open arms as “mariposas,” or butterflies, by the cash-strapped government. They have been able to take advantage of another reform in 2011 which authorizes only Cubans to buy and sell real estate. Previously, they alone were allowed only to exchange property. Real estate sales took off for a country of just 11 million with a state-led economy: 45,000 in 2012, 88,000 in 2013 and 100,000 in 2014, before falling back slightly in 2015, said planning official Carlos Garcia Pleyan, a Spaniard from Catalonia who has spent over half a century in Cuba.

The market remains “very active” however, according to property specialist Armando Portela, in an interview with Miami-based Cuban magazine Cuba Geografica despite having to “overcome many setbacks, such as weak access to technology, the lack of public information....financial tools, legislative delays.”

Havana, with its colorful buildings and old world charm, will celebrate its Quincentenary in 2019, and the government of President Miguel Diaz-Canel is trying to make up a shortfall of some 700,000 housing units in the city, by boosting construction from the current 20,000 to 50,000 units a year. It’s a tall order when the obstacles against the government are not just financial. Meanwhile, returning Cubans are buying and renovating old buildings to make restaurants or tourist apartments, and money, out of them. Prices at the moment run from 5,000 dollars for small apartments on the edge of the city to a million dollars, in upmarket residential areas like Kholy, Miramar or Vedado. The sellers are generally owners of big houses who want to downsize and need money, whether to leave Cuba or invest in a business.