The seller, Marita, is advertising this Havana apartment on revolico.com, an online marketplace that’s kind of like a Cuban Craigslist. She’s asking the equivalent of around $57,600 in convertible Cuban pesos.
Of course, at the moment real estate sales in Cuba are strictly illegal and have been for the past five decades. But that may change soon. As part of sweeping economic reforms unveiled at the Communist Party Congress in April, Cuba plans to allow the buying and selling of homes and cars.
A July 1 article in Granma, the Communist Party newspaper, painted the broad brush strokes of the real estate reform: such transactions would be permitted with little government interference beyond getting notary approval, making payment through a state bank and paying an as yet unspecified tax.
The real estate reform has yet to become law, but it’s possible it could when the National Assembly, Cuba’s parliament, convenes Monday for a three-day meeting at Havana’s Convention Palace. In any case, the government has said a new law will take effect by the end of the year.
This potential sea change has set off a flurry of activity on both sides of the Florida Straits. For years, Cuban-Americans have been funneling money to relatives to fix up tired properties or for under-the-table payments to “buy’’ a home or sweeten a permuta, or swap, the accepted form of acquiring Cuban real estate.
Now with the possibility of a true real estate market developing, people have been dusting off property titles or trying to find them and have been busy fixing up properties they anticipate putting on the market, said Antonio R. Zamora, a Miami lawyer who specializes in foreign investment.
“A lot of money is coming from Miami — some of it’s speculative,’’ said Zamora, who visited Cuba recently.
Some exiles say they have made under-the-table payments to purchase beach homes or other properties from family or friends with the understanding that some day they will own the homes outright. But they have no official paperwork to acknowledge such transactions.
In these cases, it should be buyer beware, said George Harper, a Miami attorney who left Cuba when he was 17. “That’s all well and good but any deal is subject to what the local laws are.’’
The expected law does not allow foreign ownership. The guidelines announced in Granma said that foreigners and Cubans living abroad can’t own property unless they are permanent residents of Cuba. Cubans will be allowed to own only one home and they can inherit a dwelling, even if the relatives of the deceased don’t live in the home, according to Granma.
There are plenty of humanitarian reasons to release Mr. Gross, who has been confined for 19 months. Somewhat overweight when he was arrested, Mr. Gross has lost 100 pounds, according to his wife and other American visitors who have been allowed to meet with him; he also suffers from gout, ulcers and arthritis. His daughter is struggling with cancer, and his mother is reported to be in poor health.
Cuban authorities have portrayed Mr. Gross as a spy involved in an enterprise aimed at undermining the regime. That seems unlikely in the extreme. In fact, Mr. Gross, a veteran development worker who had minimal command of Spanish, was part of a democratization project of the sort the U.S. government runs in countries all over the world.
At the time of his arrest, Mr. Gross was working for Development Alternatives Inc., a Bethesda firm that had won a $6 million government contract to promote democracy in Cuba. His work consisted mainly of providing computers and satellite phones to Cuban Jews, a community thought to number about 1,500, so they could access the Internet, whose use is restricted in Cuba, and contact Jewish communities beyond Cuba’s shores. Not exactly a cloak-and-dagger project likely to bring the Castro brothers to their knees.
The Obama administration has made it clear that any improvement in relations with Cuba is on hold pending Mr. Gross’s release. That’s a fitting response to the communist regime’s knee-jerk behavior in persecuting an American whose “crime,” if any, may have been an excess of naivete.
No comments:
Post a Comment