Real Estate in Cuba
Cuba is a country on an island just 90 miles south of the United States, it became a communist regime under totalitarian rule over fifty years ago. It expropriated personal, commercial, and real property from its citizens, foreign residents, and foreign countries like the United States under absurd and unjustified pretexts and never paid anyone a hundred of its value. They only achieved failure, waste, and the disruption of lives and wealth. Natural resources have been depleted and damage to ecology and the environment have rendered land value worthless for modern use and development. Commercial buildings of beautiful Spanish, French and American architecture have been allowed to fall into disrepair from lack of maintenance across the country.
Modern agricultural and commercial enterprises, on a par with the rest of the world in efficiency and productivity, became the product of a system that reflected similar failures in the countries taken over by Russia after World War II. Which delayed their progress for years behind most civilized countries. Russia’s failure to satellite Cuba played a role in its downfall as the leading communist state.
Cuba’s refusal to compensate for the expropriations of the United States and all other countries that had investments in Cuba forced the United States to impose an embargo on Cuba, as a result, all credits and commercial agreements were suspended, all credits, deposits and monetary accounts. de Cuba in US banks, were frozen. and trading stopped. between the two countries. Capital fled by any means possible until the Cuban revolutionary government learned ways to stop the flow of funds in convertible currency such as the US dollar that had free exchange and circulation on par with Cuba’s currency (peso). But the land and buildings could not leave the country nor could they be sold to get their monetary value out of the country because the revolutionary government took control of all the banks, property registries and converted the currency (peso) to a new peso of lower value. . making the old currency (peso) useless and illegal.
Since then, obviously all the property cannot belong to the revolutionary government but they have full and absolute control over it. Will this change in the future? The answer is yes.
Cuba had a preferential sugar supplier quota to the US that had been earned by Cuba’s support of the US during the war years when Cuba was ruled by democratic governments. That quota of preferential seller of sugar to the United States had been the agreement that turned Cuba into one of the best economically developed countries in the world and the second with the highest per capita income in the American continent. Cuba’s preferential sugar quota was removed and delivered in parts to four other countries in Central and South Latin America.
The Russian economy was unable to sustain Cuba because its methods of development, production and distribution were never followed by a Cuban population established in the capitalist ways of its closest and most profitable trading partner, the US.
Real Estate begins with the land and its highest and best use. If you buy land in the rough and pay a market price, you won’t make a profit when you sell it unless the economy around you improves, or unless you change its use to a productive purpose. Because in a communist country all property belongs to the state and every citizen is under the control of the state or government, there is no personal initiative, interest, and much less freedom to perform and do the best that a person can do. to improve his or her life and that of his family. Therefore, at the individual level in Cuba, Real Estate has no value. Since Cuba controls all property, from raw land to improved real estate, be it industrial, commercial or utility facilities. The Cuban government owns everything and manages every productive element that keeps the country running. They do so mainly through members of the armed forces who have been replacing the regular work force of Cuban society. As in most countries, US soldiers are paid less than civilians, regardless of job performance.
In Cuba, every citizen has to serve in the military, in a country where private enterprise is not allowed and anyone caught operating a private business is arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned, the average citizen has minimal options in life.
School is free, but most of the curriculum is political indoctrination to eventually feed the workforce, which is the military, they demand a free, high-quality public health system, but it’s not true, they go through school free, many doctors who never get supervised practice and are sent to poor countries to serve the people, but in essence practice their specialty without responsible supervision. Cubans have few options, the army, a profession of social worker such as being a militant observer of their family and friends, a doctor without a practice, engineers without a job or a surviving mother in a society without a private company.
. When an individual cannot follow the few options mentioned, this person becomes what they call in terms of socialist countries an “Antisocial”, which means that the person with a lot of tolerance works when they find something to do, like repairing a car. or a household item, I deal in black. consumer goods market, and steal from the government anything a friend in the military lets go unnoticed. When we examine this reality, it becomes clear why so many risk everything to leave the country by any means. A raft sailing to the Florida Keys or Mexico, by marriage to a foreigner, or by becoming a citizen of another country such as Spain by descent in some proven way.
Real Estate in Cuba began as a colony of Spain, the first settlers who had an interest in raising cattle, or growing tobacco chose an area of land where of course there were no fences. To claim a parcel of land, a person could take a stick and throw it as far as he could and then mark a circle around it and measure the land inside the circle. This was called a herd or corral, and was later recorded as a parcel. Real Estate was a rudimentary way of knowing who owned the land, so the system was open to numerous claims, with no solution in sight. We must give credit to the late university professor and Doctor of Commercial Sciences, Mr. Paulino Urbieta who, as a thesis at the University of Havana, carried out Real Estate and many other valuable research items back in 1940 to continue improving and better preserving the property. public. and statistical records using the metric system of measurement. It was before that year that agronomists began to record and measure properties with greater precision. The registration was carried out by a Notary Public who, contrary to the method in the United States, a Notary Public in Cuba had to have the same university credits as a lawyer, in essence, to be a Real Estate Lawyer. Guardian of property records.
When the communist revolution came to Cuba in 1959, the government used property registries only to distribute property in the way it saw fit for its particular plans and uses. Therefore, most property records in Cuba are in woeful disarray.
Many second- and third-generation exiled Cuban lawyers and realtors have been able to unearth Cuban property records of prime land, buildings, and real estate in order to establish claims to recover properties taken from their rightful original owners for the time being. fifty. communist government.
The fact that more than fifty years have passed under communism in Cuba shows only a struggle on this continent between Capitalism and Communism, something that Europe has experienced and continues to experience in a somewhat colder confrontation, and which is now called Socialism. . It is spreading throughout Latin America and becoming a threat to peace, democracy and peaceful social order in the region, it affects people’s right to Real Estate Property, which is the starting point for progress and a better life. .
When Cuba and the US move towards better relations and US interests change, Real Estate will continue to be a value that can only work if its owners have rights to use, sell and transmit it to their heirs.
For the next several years, Cuban Real Estate will continue to be a very difficult property to determine who owns it, as the Cuban government has leased it to foreign investors, hotels and light industries have been built, and rights of use have been granted to other countries. . , even countries enemies of the US Eminent domain is the most common and the only way to designate the use of Real Estate in Cuba.
The fact that Cuba is only 90 miles away, a small island surrounded by water and now part of the global economy and a springboard for other countries with ambitions, resources and political domination in Latin America, sooner or later the US government USA, your people. and allies will have to confront not what eleven million Cubans have done, but what a few thousand that make up the now called socialist Cuban government have done with the Cuban people and are responsible for having made Cuba go back in time and progress until the point of having reduced it to the second poorest country on the continent.
The Cuban people live in housing below our description of “Marginal” condition, several families of ten or more share houses built for one family and several houses share a single bathroom people sleep in bunk beds one above the other on two or more levels under one roof. People can’t move from one house to another let alone buy it so everyone rents from the government. When a real need for a bigger or smaller house arises, the head of the household goes to the government housing office, but there is never a vacancy, the country trailing housing needs by thousands of unknown units. So a lot of illegal and tolerated housing activity takes place in the streets or mainly in the central park of the city.
Example: a typical “antisocial” citizen knows someone who needs a bigger house, so in the public park the word spreads and soon someone appears with another house or apartment to change, they make a verbal agreement and pay a commission to the third party. party finder , then they go to the government office and request permission to make the change which they usually get, as a result, that is the typical way a real estate transaction in Cuba can be done every day. by the citizens
In a very limited number of Spanish citizens they have leased prime land and built condominiums for seasonal occupancy by tourists where the Cuban government is always a 51% owner. it is doubtful that in a turnaround in Cuba these investors could establish any legal claim to a new government, be it communist or capitalist.
For years to come, Cuba Real Estate will continue to be one of the worst investments anyone can make. For second homes, nursing homes, resort investments or any other real estate investment.
There are countries where real estate agents who are professional international property specialists certified members of the National Association of Real Estate and your state and local association can provide a real estate investor, buyer or seller with a lot of advice to achieve an investment. safe and worth it.