A Cuban housing market? Gov't is lifting a taboo

[Bacchus39]

http://news.yahoo.com/cuban-housing-market-govt-lifting-taboo-040118444.html


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This is Cuba's informal real-estate bazaar, where a chronic housing shortage brings everyone from newlyweds to retirees together to strike deals that often involve thousands of dollars in under-the-table payments. They're breaking not just the law but communist doctrine by trading and profiting in property, and now their government is about to get in on the action.

President Raul Castro has pledged to legalize the purchase and sale of homes by the end of the year, bringing this informal market out of the shadows as part of an economic reform package under which Cuba is already letting islanders go into business for themselves in 178 designated activities, as restaurateurs, wedding planners, plumbers, carpenters.

An aboveboard housing market promises multiple benefits for the cash-strapped island: It would help ease a housing crunch, stimulate construction employment and generate badly needed tax revenue. It would attack corruption by officials who accept bribes to sign off on illicit deals, and give people options to seek peaceful resolutions to black-market disputes that occasionally erupt into violence.

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While they wait for the new law to be enacted and the specifics to be announced, Cubans' legal options are few. They can enroll in cooperative construction projects, build on existing properties or join the long waiting list for government housing. Or they can head to the open-air real-estate market in hopes of negotiating a "permuta," which officially is a swap of equal-value properties but in reality usually involves illegal cash on the side.

[joshcryer]

1. More and more it's looking like Castro's Cuba is going the way of the USSR.