🇬🇧 We finally own a property in Cuba

After 8 years of being married. after 13 long trips to Cuba. After 10 years of being in love wit Viñales we finally own a small property there and this is our story.

Having a house in Cuba is a dream for many after they fall in love with the island. But untill now it was difficult for 2 reasons:

No foreigner without Cuban residency can purchase a property. (This is still the case)
The prices in Cuba were always insane.

And the 2nd point was always frustrating. It’s because there are no regulations in Cuba when it comes to prices. So no market benchmark or whatsever. Basically people were asking money they wanted to get and it meant a house in Cuba could be anything between 10k and 500k of USD. But with lack of demand and a lot of offer (people wanting to sell everything to emigrate) the prices went down a lot. But still this is not why and how we bought a house.

We bought a house of our 86 year old aunt who never had kids. Her husband passed away almost 3 years ago and she stayed alone with very very small retirement that it’s just not enough even to feed a 86 year old. So we made a deal.

She sold her house to us and the money we gave her will be enough for her to live her life the way she wants to. She will live in the house until the day she dies obviously. For now we have our comfortable room in my mother in law house anyway so we thought about this more like an investment for the future. Also the family doesn’t have to worry about the money and the food for the aunt anymore. It’s a win- win for everybody.

Now the funny part. I was used to not having any rights even as spouse in Cuba. So imagine my surpise when I had to sign all the documents. Aparentely the new family code (new laws introduced 2 years ago) made me somehow visible to the Cuban law. I still can not owe anything but I have to sign every paper when Fidel is purchasing something. Also he can’t sell this property without my knowledge. So even if foreigners (spouses of Cuban citizens to be exact) can’t own stuff, Cubans still can’t do anything without them knowing and signing. This is of course if the merriage was officiated in Cuba as well. It’s funny how it changed. I have my theory that this is because of the scammers who were taking money form the spouse, bying properties and bum, just like that the scammed spouse could’t do anything about it. So here you have now Cubans married to yumas can’t fart on their own.

But about the house, what are we going to do next? We will do the most urgent renovations so our aunt can live there peacefully and one day we’ll make of it a perfect holiday house. It has an avocado tree in the back!