Old Havana, built in the 16th Century, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The rich and deep history of the city pulsates through every street, brought to life in the colors, flavors and faces of the people who inhabit this ancient city.

A land that time forgot but with a beating heart eager to catch up with the modern world.

Images : www.visitcuba.com

Cuba for sale

'Havana is now the big cake – and everyone is trying to get a slice'

Property developers are queuing up to pounce as Cuba opens its doors to the world. Proposals for Havana's old harbor are described as 'Las Vegas meets Miami in the Caribbean' property developers are queuing up to pounce.

Proposals for Havana's old quarter are described as 'Las Vegas meets Miami in the Caribbean'.

Havana, Cuba – An Ongoing Revolution - what goes around, comes around?

State owned Habaguanex: a company charged with developing hotels, restaurants and shops, ploughs profits back into restoring Havana's derelict buildings and streets, as well as seeding social projects and community facilities.

It is claimed that more than half a billion dollars has been channelled into the old town.

The company now presides over a growing empire of some 20 hotels, 40 restaurants and 50 bars and cafés, as well as high-end boutiques.

However, outside the tourist circuit of the four main plazas and the carefully repaved pedestrian routes that wind between them, two-thirds of the old town remains in a perilous state.

Look beyond the newly polished stage-set facades, and you'll still find families living several generations to a room in buildings that threaten to collapse around them at any minute.

Although half of the profits of Habaguanex are ploughed into social initiatives – including health clinics, schools, libraries and old people's centers – the renovations have come at a price, that only exaggerate the divisions between the scrubbed-up and the squalid.

Many former residents of these grand historic buildings have been rehoused far away from the center.

Many more look set to be displaced as the pressures to accommodate foreign visitors rise.

Not that this seems to be standing in the way of the luxury hotel developers, who have their sights set on opportunities across the city.

The history of land ownership

However, the future of such enterprises, post-embargo, could be precarious given the complex history of land ownership here.

One US shipping company has an $850,000 claim on a kilometer stretch of the waterfront, including the brewery building, which they say was seized from them after the revolution.

The same goes for many such buildings across the city and beyond, with the value of claims for confiscated US property totaling almost $8bn, including long-standing claims from the likes of Exxon, Texaco and Coca-Cola. Despite diplomatic talks, compensation issues have yet to be resolved.

A new kind of ate development

At the other end of the scale from the grand waterfront plans, there are signs across the city of a new kind of real-estate development.

Scaffolding has long shrouded much of Havana, but it no longer just signals the work of the City Historian and the transformation of The Capitol.

Recent changes to property laws, whichallow Cubans to buy and sell their own homes for the first time in years, paired with a relaxation of US rules on how much money Cuban-Americans can send to their family back home, have spawned a micro-real estate industry of independent renovation.

Crumbling buildings undergoing repair

Families with access to cash from overseas are doing up crumbling buildings and either letting them out as holiday rentals (possible through Airbnb since last year) or selling them on –producing a wealthy new class in the process.

It is a change in legislation that foreign companies have been quick to embrace.

One tour company is currently putting the finishing touches to the renovation of a building on the waterfront – one of a growing number of companies developing boutique holiday lets across the city.

They have encountered the chief difficulty of anyone trying to do construction work in Cuba: the dearth of materials.

Glass still isn't produced on the island, so each window has to be imported – and the customs limit of four windows per person, or two doors, mean these small-scale refurbishments often entail getting friends and family to help out.

But such obstacles certainly haven't limited the aspirations of would-be developers, or the level of quality that they can achieve with a bit of Cuban resourcefulness.

One of Havana's fledgling estate agents, offers spectacular 1950s houses that had been fixed up extraordinarily lavishly and are now being offered for up to $800,000.

Elsewhere there are penthouses listed for more than $2m, although no one knows how much anything is really worth: there are no benchmarks and no mortgage industry.

Instead, people gather at the end of Paseo del Prado, standing with handwritten signs around their necks, displaying faded photos of apartments for sale, and browse listings written in well used exercise books.

The title written on the front in faded ink could be, "In your Dreams."

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