Buy House Cuba

Cuba's new housing law (Ley 187), explained

By Buy House Cuba ·

A green colonial corner building and a vintage car in Havana

On July 30, 2026, Cuba’s National Assembly approved a new housing law, Ley 187 “De la Vivienda.” The approval was published in the Gaceta Oficial on August 14. As of late September, the full text and its effective date have not yet been published, and the regulations that will actually govern mortgages and sales to foreigners are due 60 days after approval. So what follows is based on the draft that circulated, the summaries from the Assembly, and reporting from Cuban and independent outlets. Some of these various sources contradict or conflict with each other, as pointed out.

This is the first serious rewrite of Cuba’s housing rules since 1988, and it matters to two groups of readers here: families abroad who still own a house in Cuba and anyone wondering whether foreigners will ever be allowed to buy one.

What were the old rules?

Cuba’s 1988 General Housing Law and the 2011 Decree-Law 288, which finally allowed private home sales, were based on one basic idea: the state guaranteed everyone a home, so nobody was supposed to own more than one primary residence plus a vacation place, and that property right was tied to living in Cuba. If you emigrated permanently, the state took your house. You could transfer it to a close relative before leaving, and many people did, but the rule shaped the market for decades. It is one of the main reasons Havana has seen so many distress sales since 2021: people who were leaving needed to sell fast, because a house left behind would be confiscated.

That framework is what Ley 187 replaces.

Does Ley 187 end confiscation when you emigrate?

This is the headline change. Under the new law, leaving Cuba permanently no longer costs you your property. Emigrants can keep it, rent it, leave it to heirs, or sell it. For the Cuban-American families who own or have inherited property on the island, this is the change they have requested for 30 years.

Two practical notes. First, until the law takes effect, the old rule still applies. Anyone planning to leave before that date should still take whatever actions they think most prudent for themselves. Second, the law does not restore anything that has already been confiscated. A house taken from a family that emigrated in 1995 stays with the state or with whoever it was reassigned to. The new rule is forward-looking.

Two homes per person

The draft allows an individual to own up to two homes plus a vacation home, up from one. This sounds small, but it legalizes a lot of what already exists informally, where families hold a second apartment in a relative’s name. It gives people who inherit a house while already owning one a way to keep both.

The “abandonment” procedure

This is the provision that should worry absent owners, and the one Cuban state media talked about least. The draft creates a court-supervised process under which municipal authorities can petition to take over homes that are in ruins and left unrestored. Municipal councils also get a preferential right to buy homes in certain cases.

Read together with the end of confiscation, the logic is clear: the state is giving up the automatic seizure of emigrants’ houses, but it is not going to watch hundreds of thousands of people leave and let their homes collapse. If you own a house in Cuba and live abroad, what matters now is maintenance and having a named representative on the island who can respond to a notice. An empty but maintained house with someone answering for it is in a very different position from one that has been sealed since 2022.

The exact wording of the abandonment clause and how aggressively municipalities will use it are the single most important things to watch when the regulations come out and become official.

Can foreigners buy under Ley 187?

This is where the summaries disagree, so here is the careful version.

The draft law allowed foreign natural and legal persons to buy urban homes in two situations: if they make “significant investments in the national economy,” or if they need residency for medical or similar reasons. A Directorio Cubano summary of the Gaceta publication reads the final text more broadly, as simply allowing foreigners to buy or rent. 14ymedio’s reading of the draft is the narrower, conditional one. The Council of Ministers was given 60 days to issue the regulations defining these conditions, and those regulations will actually decide the question.

The honest summary today is: the law is expected to allow limited foreign purchase under conditions still to be defined. It is not an open market, and there is no sign it will become one soon.

For Americans, there is a second wall that Ley 187 does nothing about. The US Cuban Assets Control Regulations prohibit US persons from dealing in property in which Cuba or a Cuban national has an interest, and no general license allows a US person to buy a home there as a private buyer. Even if Cuba opens its side completely, a US citizen or green-card holder still cannot buy without a change in US regulations. Ley 187 changes Cuban law, which is only half the story for a US citizen. More on whether Americans can buy property in Cuba.

The migration law. Cuba’s new migration, foreigners and citizenship laws were approved in 2024, published May 5, 2026, and take effect in November 2026. They create a “real-estate residency” for foreigners who already own or rent in state-administered residential complexes. Analysts have pointed out the circularity: owning enables the residency, not the other way around. It is not a path to buying.

The land law. A draft land law that surfaced in June 2026 keeps agricultural and forestry land entirely off-limits to foreigners. Resident foreigners and approved joint ventures can hold usufruct rights, and absences of six to twelve months can trigger abandonment there too. Houses and land are on different tracks, which matters for anyone reading headlines like “Cuba opens property to foreigners.”

What to watch

  1. Publication of Ley 187’s full text and its effective date.
  2. The 60-day regulations, especially the foreign-buyer conditions and the abandonment procedure.
  3. How the first abandonment cases are handled, and whether owners abroad get real notice.
  4. Any movement on the US side: an OFAC general license touching real estate would appear as an amendment to 31 CFR 515 in the Federal Register.

We track all of this in our free report and email once a quarter when something changes. If your family lost property before 1959, the claims problem is covered here.

Sources

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