Economist Elías Amor warns that the new Law 187 on Housing in Cuba —published this Wednesday in the Official Gazette and set to take effect on October 21— represents a missed opportunity to truly transform the island's real estate sector.
In an interview with Tania Costa, Amor succinctly summarizes his diagnosis without mincing words: "Housing in Cuba at this moment is not the best investment option because I genuinely believe that the State has lost a great opportunity to create a different law."
The economist believes that what Cuba needs is a law that guarantees that "construction becomes a private activity by nature, where the State relinquishes excessive control and utterly absurd and intrusive regulations, and allows the private sector, supply, and the market to drive the development of all types of properties."
To illustrate the underlying problem, Amor draws a parallel with the Cuban agricultural sector. "In agriculture, the farmer will never own the land on which he spends his life. And since he will never own the land, his incentives to improve productivity and achieve good harvests are what they are," he points out.
And he adds: "In construction, it is exactly the same. If the market does not exist and the entity regulating it is the Communist Party and its municipal organizations, who has the right or not to a home? How many homes can one have, and which one should be by the beach and how many in the countryside?"
The Law 187 replaces the 1988 regulation and introduces significant advancements: it allows Cubans residing abroad and foreigners to own up to two properties, eliminates the automatic confiscation of properties due to emigration, recognizes the right to inheritance, and paves the way for housing cooperatives.
However, the regulation does not authorize private banking nor does it guarantee access to mortgage credit for individual buyers, and it does not reform the 2019 Constitution, which, according to its critics, hinders the full functionality of a real mortgage market.
That void is precisely what Amor points out as the Achilles' heel of the entire legal architecture.
The economist also highlights the paradox that illustrates the state of the sector better than any data: construction is the activity that pays the best salaries in Cuba, with an average of 14,500 pesos per month, according to the National Office of Statistics and Information, and yet no one wants to work in it.
The macroeconomic context worsens the outlook. The year-on-year inflation in Cuba reached 28.44% in September 2026, with a cumulative rate of 24.85% in the first nine months of the year. Amor anticipates that it will close between 35% and 40% by the end of December, rendering the promised subsidies and credits to youths and vulnerable families unfeasible.
For the economist, the problem is not technical but structural: "As long as all of that is not eliminated and absolute freedom is not granted to the sector, it is happening just like with the land. There are clear limitations imposed by the system that prevent the economy from functioning and thriving."
The official housing deficit exceeds 900,000 homes, and in 2025 the regime completed only 2,382 units out of the 10,795 planned, achieving a completion rate of 22%. Against this backdrop, Amor concludes that the new law does not change the essential issue: as long as the Communist Party decides who lives where and how many properties each Cuban can own, the sector will remain stagnant.
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