Cuba legalizes real estate brokers

Informal listings in Cuba
Informal listings in Cuba

Real estate agents make up one of several groups that are newly allowed to operate as private professionals in Raul Castro’s Cuba.

Though buying and selling homes was legalized in 2011 for the first time in decades, making money by connecting buyers with sellers was still technically against the law.

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Brokering, along with building homes and running auto body shops, was legalized because the country is now in a better position to supply “prime materials, equipment and other inputs to the network of stores,” said Jose Barreiro, a Labor Ministry official, according to a quote from Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma cited by the Nanaimo Daily News.

Since statewide reforms began in 2010, more than 430,000 private employment licenses have been issued, and 436,342 independent workers are currently operating, according to numbers referenced in Granma cited by NDN. [Nanaimo Daily News]Julie Strickland