Cuba lifts property sale ban

Cuba said today it will allow property to be bought and sold for the first time since the early days of the revolution.

It is the most important reform yet in a series of free-market changes under President Raul Castro.

The law, which takes effect on November 10, applies to citizens living in Cuba and permanent residents only, according to a red-letter headline on the front page of the Communist Party daily Granma.

The law limits Cubans to owning one home in the city and another in the country, an effort to prevent the accumulation of large property holdings.

All property sales must be made through Cuban bank accounts so that they can be better regulated, and the transactions will be subject to bank commissions.

Sales will also be subject to an 8% tax on the assessed value of the property.

“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 Virginia.

Cuban exiles will not be allowed to purchase property on the island since they are not residents.

The change follows October’s legalisation of buying and selling cars.

Castro has also allowed citizens to go into business for themselves in a number of approved jobs.

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, he enacted a reform that gave title to whoever lived in a home.