Cuba Luxury Rent

08/10/2026

Every collector asks the same question in a Havana studio, usually with the canvas already chosen: can I take this on the plane?
You can. Cuba's heritage law from 2022 and its 2023 regulation set out how: original works of art may need an export permit, and the permit asks for four things. A sworn statement that the work is yours, the work itself shown to the authority, where it's going, and when it leaves.
The one people miss is the second. The piece has to be seen before it goes in the suitcase, which means planning a morning for it, not hoping for one on the way to the airport.
And if you're thinking ahead: the next Havana Biennial is announced for 2027. That's when the studios open their doors.
New on the Journal: the rules, article by article, straight from the Gaceta.
Cuba Luxury Rent. In Cuba since 2000.

https://cubaluxuryrent.com/buying-art-in-cuba/

Buying art in Cuba is legal. Regulated works leave only with an export permit under Ley 155/2022: four requirements, read from the Gaceta

05/10/2026

Cuban law never uses the words "short-term".
Article 74 of Ley 65 draws the line by purpose instead: if a home is let for lodging, the owner needs prior authorisation from the municipal labour office, and the price is whatever owner and guest agree. That text has stood since 2014.
What changed is August 2026. Decreto 160 now asks owners who host guests living abroad to report their identity data to the Ministry of the Interior. Inside Old Havana's conservation zone there's one more step: a consultation with the Historian's Office.
We've always worked the same way: we visit every house in person, and we don't take anonymous bookings. So for us the new rule is just the law catching up.
New on the Journal: what an owner needs before the first guest, rule by rule, straight from the Gaceta.
Cuba Luxury Rent. In Cuba since 2000.

https://cubaluxuryrent.com/short-term-rental-in-cuba/

A short-term rental in Cuba needs municipal authorisation, pays personal income tax and, since August 2026, reports guests who live abroad

24/09/2026

Cuba's Ministry of Finance values a bedroom at 90,000 pesos, a garage at 15,000 and a garden at 17,500.
Then it multiplies by the address. Six municipalities get the top tourism band, 6.0: Playa, Plaza de la Revolución, La Habana Vieja, Trinidad, Cárdenas and Viñales. The rest of the country mostly sits at 1.5.
Put those two lists side by side and you've more or less described a Havana villa. Bedrooms, somewhere for the car, a garden, in Miramar, Siboney or Vedado. Every home we rent out is in one of those districts, and so is our beach house in Varadero.
What the tax table can't measure is the rest of it. The cook who stops asking how you take your coffee on day two. The terrace at six in the evening. One long table instead of four hotel rooms on different floors.
New on the Journal: what makes a luxury villa in Cuba different from a hotel, where the good houses actually are, and which weeks of the 2026–27 season to ask about first.

Cuba Luxury Rent. In Cuba since 2000.

21/09/2026

Cuba's tax office values a bedroom at 90,000 pesos.
A garage adds 15,000. A patio and gardens add 17,500. You total them, multiply by a location coefficient, and that's what the state thinks your house is worth — printed in an annex, line by line, so a family can work it out at the kitchen table.
The coefficients are the interesting part. Playa, Plaza de la Revolución, La Habana Vieja, Trinidad, Cárdenas and Viñales sit at 6.0, named as Zones of High Significance for Tourism. Cerro and Centro Habana take 5.0. Most of the country takes 1.5.
Sales have been legal since November 2011 and the price is whatever the two sides agree. But the tax base can never fall below that state number, and in a swap — a permuta — the state number is the whole basis. The ministry calls the floor a containment measure against under-declaration. Everyone knows what that means.
New on the Journal: what a permuta is, what it costs, and the fifteen-year subsidy obligation that can follow a house from one owner to the next.
Cuba Luxury Rent. In Cuba since 2000.

https://cubaluxuryrent.com/what-is-a-permuta-in-cuba/

A permuta in Cuba is a notarised home swap. Cuba freed sale prices in 2011, but the state's own valuation still sets the floor under every transfer

18/09/2026

The best meal you'll eat in Havana has no website.
Not a bad website. None. It has a cook, a dining room with eight tables, and a phone that a particular kind of person already has in their contacts.
That's most of what a concierge is for here. Cuba runs on who picks up.
Some of what that unlocks in practice: the rooftop table held back for people the house knows. A licensed driver and a restored convertible for the photographs, plus an air-conditioned car for the road. A rum tasting led by a maestro ronero - UNESCO put that body of knowledge on its intangible heritage list in 2022. A son trio playing three metres from your chair, in your own courtyard; Cuban Son joined the same list in 2025.
And ci**rs through the official channel, which matters more than people think. Habanos distributes 27 handmade brands under protected appellations of origin. Anything offered on the street is outside that chain.

https://cubaluxuryrent.com/private-concierge-in-cuba/

Cuba Luxury Rent. In Cuba since 2000.

A private concierge in Cuba opens what has no booking page: the paladar table, the classic car, the son trio, the boat. What we arrange in 2026

14/09/2026

People buy the patio.

Every viewing in Habana Vieja goes the same way. The tiles, the ironwork, the light coming down the well in the middle of the house. Then somebody looks up at the roof timbers, and the whole conversation changes.

Here's what actually decides a restoration in Old Havana, and it isn't the architect. It's a number between one and five.

Cuba's Decreto 92/2023 gives every heritage building a protection grade, I to V. Grade I is a declared monument and the work has to preserve what makes it one. Grade V can be demolished with approval. The grade attaches to the building, not the owner, and it survives a sale. Same street, two houses, two completely different projects.

Then there's the second permit. Inside the Historian's conservation zone, every intervention also needs an Autorizo para Obras y Usos. Two files, two queues, and one can stop the other.

Twenty-six categories of work count as an intervention. Repainting the front wall in the wrong colour is one of them.

We've written the whole thing out, with the article number on every claim.

https://cubaluxuryrent.com/restoring-a-colonial-building-old-havana/

Cuba Luxury Rent. In Cuba since 2000.

Restoring a colonial building in Old Havana runs on five protection grades and an Autorizo para Obras y Usos. What Cuba's 2023 heritage rules require.

10/09/2026

Every event brief we get for Havana starts with a photograph. A courtyard, a band, a long table under an arcade.

Then someone asks how many people fit, and the photograph stops answering.

So here's the actual inventory. The Palacio de Convenciones in Siboney: 60,000 square metres, open since August 1979, eleven halls seating 70 to 400 apiece around a plenary for about 1,500, and six channels of simultaneous interpretation wired in since the day it opened. PABEXPO next door for flat-floor work and galas - it ran the Habanos Festival closing auction in 2025, which raised 17.94 million euros in one evening. EXPOCUBA out in Arroyo Naranjo, 600,000 square metres, where Cuba's largest trade fair used about three per cent of the ground. And the UNESCO-listed buildings of Old Havana, 238.7 hectares of fortresses and palaces, for the dinner nobody forgets.

Each one does a different job. Pick the wrong one and you spend the budget fixing the building instead of running the programme.

We've written the whole comparison out, with the source on every number.

Cuba Luxury Rent. In Cuba since 2000.

https://cubaluxuryrent.com/havana-corporate-event-venues/

Havana's corporate venues, with the numbers: the Palacio de Convenciones, PABEXPO, EXPOCUBA and the UNESCO-listed buildings of Old Havana. Which fits what.

07/09/2026

Spanish below
Walk down Mercaderes and every second doorway looks colonial. Heavy double doors, a cool passage, a patio with one plant in it.

Here's the thing almost nobody abroad knows before they fall for a photograph: the Oficina del Historiador counts 3,370 buildings in Old Havana's 214-hectare historic centre, and puts roughly two-thirds of that stock in the first decades of the 20th century. About 500 are considered of high heritage value.

So "is it colonial?" is not the question that decides anything. The question is what protection grade the building carries - I to V, under Decreto 92/2023 - because the grade is what says whether you may adapt it, restore it, or barely touch it.

We've written the whole thing out: the zaguan, the patio, the puntal, the entresuelo, what a ciudadela is, and what the law says has to happen when a protected house changes hands.

Cuba Luxury Rent. In Cuba since 2000.
Todo el mundo dice "casa colonial". Casi nadie dice de qué tipo.

El Plan Maestro de la Oficina del Historiador tiene 3 370 inmuebles registrados en las 214 hectáreas del Centro Histórico, y unos 500 se consideran de alto valor patrimonial. Dos terceras partes del fondo se construyeron en las primeras décadas del siglo XX. Coloniales de aspecto, republicanas de fecha.

Lo que sí decide todo es el grado de protección. El Decreto 92/2023, en su Artículo 136.1, establece cinco grados, del I al V, y cada uno marca qué se puede tocar en el inmueble y qué no.

Y una que conviene saber antes de comprar: según el Artículo 82 de la Ley 155/2022, en un bien declarado Patrimonio Cultural de la Nación hay que dar cuenta de la intención de venta, y el Consejo Nacional de Patrimonio Cultural puede ejercer tanteo y retracto.

Lo explicamos entero: el zaguán, el patio, el puntal, el entresuelo, la ciudadela.

Cuba Luxury Rent. En Cuba desde el año 2000.

03/09/2026

A wedding in Cuba is a notarial act. That sounds like a technicality until you read what the same signature does.
Cuba's Family Code says a marriage produces legal effects only when it's formalised before a notary or a Civil Status registrar. Article 201.3, one sentence, no room to argue. So the ceremony on the terrace is a ceremony. The marriage happens at a desk.
And at that same desk, unless the couple has signed a pact beforehand, they enter the community of marital property - which then covers income earned during the marriage and anything bought with common funds, even when the deed carries one name.
On 7 January 2026 the rules around that desk changed. Witnesses gone. A five-working-day publicity window added.
We wrote the whole thing up, article by article, from the Gaceta Oficial itself. Link in the first comment.

Cuba Luxury Rent - in Cuba since 2000.

01/09/2026

There is a document that settles the oldest argument in Havana, and hardly anybody who buys or sells a home here has read it.

In 2024 Cuba's Ministry of Finance and Prices sorted the country into five tiers and gave each one a multiplier. Havana's 15 municipalities landed in three of them. Playa, Plaza de la Revolucion and La Habana Vieja at 6.0. Cerro, Centro Habana and Diez de Octubre at 5.0. The other nine at 4.0.

Here is the part people miss. The construction values underneath are identical everywhere in Cuba - so many pesos a bedroom, so many for a garage. Only the coefficient moves. Two identical three-bedroom flats, one in Miramar and one in Santos Suarez, are taxed 15,600 pesos apart per side, and the only difference between them is the address on the deed.

Centro Habana is the odd one out, and it's the interesting one. Most crowded municipality in Cuba. Shares a street line with Old Havana. Sits a full tier below it.

We pulled both resolutions from the Gaceta Oficial and read them in Spanish. New piece in the Journal, with the full tier table and what the extra permission step in the tourism zone actually requires.