CUBA SELLS REAL ESTATE

Cuba Real Estate For Sale In Havana

 CUBA PROPERTY FOR SALE AFTER 50 YEARS
Cuba announced Thursday it will allow real estate to be bought and sold for the first time since the early days of the revolution, the most important reform yet in a series of free-market changes under President Raul Castro.
The law, which takes effect Nov. 10, applies to citizens living in Cuba and permanent residents only, according to a red-letter headline on the front page of Thursday's Communist Party daily Granma and details published in the government's Official Gazette.
The law limits Cubans to owning one home in the city and another in the country, an effort to prevent the accumulation of large real estate holdings. It requires that all real estate transactions be made through Cuban bank accounts so that they can be better regulated, and says the transactions will be subject to bank commissions.
Sales will also be subject to an eight per cent tax on the assessed value of the property, paid equally by buyer and seller. In the case where Cubans exchange homes of equal value in a barter agreement, each side will pay four per cent of the value of their home.
"This is a very big step forward. With this action the state is granting property rights that didn't exist before," said Philip J. Peters, a Cuba analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Virginia. "If you think about it from the point of view of a Cuban family, it converts their house from a place to live into a source of wealth or a source of collateral. It's an asset that can now be made liquid."
While the Gazette was available online, few Cubans have access to the Internet and most were waiting for the booklet to go on sale at kiosks around the country. A handwritten sign posted at Havana's main distribution center Thursday advised that the law booklet was not yet on sale.
On the streets of Havana, residents said they were thrilled by the news but anxious to see the fine print.
"This is going to help me because I have some money and now I will be able to buy a better house," said Oscar Palacios Delgado, a 68-year-old office maintenance worker, adding he hoped the government would enact other changes to make it easier for Cubans to find building materials for home repairs. "This law will benefit many Cubans."
Cuban exiles will not be allowed to purchase property on the island since they are not residents. Still, they will be able to send money to help relatives buy new homes, and there was speculation some might try to buy homes themselves through frontmen, something the government would likely try to prevent.
The change follows October's legalization of buying and selling cars, though with restrictions that still make it hard for ordinary Cubans to buy new vehicles.
Castro has also allowed citizens to go into business for themselves in a number of approved jobs -- everything from party clowns to food vendors to accountants -- and has pledged to streamline the state-dominated economy by eliminating half a million government workers.
Cuba's government employs more than 80 per cent of the workers in the island's command economy, paying wages of just $20 US a month in return for free education and health care, and nearly free housing, transportation and basic foods. Castro has said repeatedly that the system is not working since taking over from his brother Fidel in 2008, but he has vowed that Cuba will remain a socialist state.

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Cubans have long bemoaned the ban on property sales, which took effect in stages over the first years after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. In an effort to fight absentee ownership by wealthy landlords, Fidel enacted a reform that gave title to whoever lived in a home. Most who left the island forfeited their properties to the state. Since no property market was allowed, the rules have meant that for decades Cubans could only exchange property through complicated barter arrangements, or through even murkier black-market deals where thousands of dollars change hands under the table, with no legal recourse if transactions go bad.
Some Cubans entered into sham marriages to make deed transfers easier. Others made deals to move into homes ostensibly to care for an elderly person living there, only to inherit the property when the person died.
Cubans will also now be allowed to inherit property from relatives without having to live in it first, and they will be able to take title of property of relatives or others who emigrate. Previously, such properties could be seized by the state.

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Related articles

• Party leaders mull change in Cuba (cnn.com)
• Cuba to allow real estate transactions (cbsnews.com)
• Cuba legalizes sale, purchase of private property (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Cuba trade focus of Brazil trip (bbc.co.uk)
• Cuba legalizes sale of private property (cbc.ca)
• Raul Castro defends Cuba's one-party system (mercurynews.com)
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CUBA CLASSIC CARS A STRANGE COMBINATION

 

 CUBAN1950'S CHEVY CLASSIC ANTIQUE CAR 

CARS AND CUBA. A STRANGE COMBINATION

Havana, CUBA- Cuba is a world of its own often compared with a walk into a time machine.
An interesting example of this is that unbeknown to the rest of the world, Cuba even has its own unique system of branding your license plate to quickly identify to the world who you are and what rights you have and don't have in Cuba.

The spectrum of color coordinated license plates and special codes tell the ever watching eye of authority how important you are in the Cuban political and Economic system, your nationality, where you work and your rank.

In short your Cuban license plate say it all as you drive in posh 5th avenue or along the seaside Malecon.

Cuba's  system of colored license plates was copied directly from the KGB in former Soviet Union. This coding system is yet another way Cuban authorities have kept control on their people and foreigners for decades.

Cuba Government Owned Cars
To be fair the fact is that the Cuban government owns most 95% of all the cars in Cuba. Cuban Government vehicles have blue plates with letters and numbers that indicate when and where the vehicle can operate.
Blue Cuban Cars cannot be used for personal use and can only be used for official government or professional purposes.

The risk to take your car to the beach is that there are many Traffic Inspectors strategically planted along most highways out of town and other high-traffic areas, stopping official cars to check their routes and to make sure they aren't being used for taking your family to the beach.

Top Cuban executives at government firms have light brown colored plates that allow more leeway yet they still may only be allowed to use their vehicles to travel to and from work.

Yet another form of control is what it really is said Emilio Perez, a chauffeur who is driving a Black Mercedes to escort elite foreign officials around Havana.

Russian Cars in Cuba
Since 1960's the Soviet Union was Cuba's God father and benefactor. For decades all Cuban license plates were boring black and white, and the first two letters specified the province where the car was registered.
The third letter determined the state or private ownership depending on the status.

The Soviets also had a very special Code of numbers for embassy license plates determined by country's recognition of the Russian Revolution: Plates for Britain, which is the first foreign country to accept the czar's ouster are still 001.

Cuba fashioned its own similar system with the first letter in the license plate indicating the 14 provinces the car originates, H is from Havana.
The letter K is "Particular" or "privately owned" car by a person or by a foreign firm.

Military Cars in Cuba
The powerful Military vehicles have mint-green with no front and only rear plates. Olive-green plates are for vehicles of the Ministry of the Interior, including El Comendante, Fidel Castro's fleet of armored black Mercedes 280s, which were built in the early 80's.

The  most valuable seem to be  the black plates are for reserved exclusively for foreign diplomats who don't have to adhere to traffic laws.
White plated cars of Cuban government ministers or heads of state organizations also drive as if they have diplomatic immunity but with reserved caution in case they are in danger of being replaced.

Cuban Classic Car Rentals

Diplomatic Cars in Cuba
Ironically its the last 3 numbers on diplomatic plates that show the professional rank of the driver. If you're behind a Mercedes with black license plate 179-002, that means the car belongs to the second most-important officer from the Russian embassy.
Even though everyone's supposed to be equal under Cuban socialism most everyone in Cuba knows that that is not true especially when a modern shiny black sedan with black license plates speeds along 5th Avenue in Miramar, Havana as if to show "I'm more important than you"

Decades ago Cuban officials' cars were Soviet imports, as the Cubans were encouraged to drive Russian Ladas or other square slow cars. Now many Cuban vehicles are imported from China or bought from Havana's Peugeot, Fiat and Mercedes dealerships, adding variety to the white-plated fleet.

Tourist Rental Cars in Cuba
Even the Toursit rental cars get maroon plates and foreign journalists, religious leaders and Cubans managers for overseas firms have orange plates.

If you see Red then its provisional plates that allow vehicles to circulate while Cuban authorities sort out just what color category is required.

American Classic Cars in Cuba
Best of all the countless 50year old American Classic roadsters that create a living moving museum along the island's potholed streets have bright yellow license plates, meaning they are normal vehicles owned by ordinary Cubans.

These dinosaurs from the good old days of Detroit's chrome-and-tail-fin era are still dominant on most Cuban roads because ordinary Cubans can not own new cars. Cubans can  buy and sell only cars manufactured before the Castro's took power in 1959.

As yet another form of Control the buying of any newer vehicles requires Cuban government permission - including justifying how you can afford a car when the communist state controls well over 90 percent of the economy and pays employees an average of about $10 to $20 a month.

All this maybe confusing for a foreigner, but for Cubans it's normal.  As they say in Cuba "No es Facil"

RENT CUBAN CLASSIC 1950's ANTIQUE CARS

On your next Cuba Vacation you can Rent cars in Havana or Varadero Cuba.