Property revolution for Cuba's corredores

But when Communist Cuba legalises buying and selling real estate at the end of this year, Jos expects a boom.

He predicts a cascade of change, including higher prices, mass relocation, property taxes and a flood of money from Cubans in the United States and around the world.

"There's going to be huge demand," said Jos, 36, a corredore, or illegal broker, who declined to give his full name. "It's been prohibited for so long."

Private property is the nub of capitalism, so the decision to allow trade in it in a land where slogans such as "socialism or death" abound, strikes many Cubans as jaw-dropping. Some, indeed, expect tight regulation that might limit Cubans to one full-time residence. But, even with state control, experts believe property sales could transform Cuba more than any other reform touted by president Raul Castro.

Compared with the changes already passed (more self-employment and mobile phone ownership) or proposed (car sales and looser emigration rules) "nothing is as big as this," said Philip Peters, an analyst at the Lexington Institute. Some also predict the capital, Havana, will once more be divided by class, as a few benefit from a potentially lucrative property market, as in eastern Europe and China.

"There will be a huge re-arrangement," said urban planning expert Mario Coyula. "Gentrification will happen."

Other effects are predicted. Sales could encourage renovation, creating jobs. Banking could expand and government will be able to tax property sales, impossible in the current swap market where money passes under the table.

And then there is the role of Cuban emigrants. While the plan seems to prohibit foreign ownership, Cuban-Americans could take advantage of president Barack Obama's rules letting them send as much as they like to relatives on the island, fuelling purchases and giving them a stake in Cuba's economic success.

"That is politically an extremely powerful development," Peters added.

The rate of change, however, will depend on complications peculiar to Cuba. A long history of poor housing and rigid control on ownership have created a warren of oddities.

There are no vacancies in Havana, Coyula, the urban designer, pointed out. Every dwelling has someone living in it. Most Cubans are essentially stuck where they are.

On the waterfront of central Havana, children peek out from buildings that should be condemned, with a third of the faade missing.A few streets inland, Cubans like Elena Acea, 40, have subdivided apartments to Alice in Wonderland proportions. Her two-bedroom is now a four-bedroom, with a plywood mezzanine where two stepsons live one atop another, barely able to stand in their own rooms.

Like many Cubans, she hopes to move - to trade her apartment for three smaller places so the elder son, 29, can start his own family.

But despite reassurances, Acea and many neighbours seemed wary of the government's promise to let go. Some Cubans expect rules forcing buyers to hold properties for five or ten years. Others say the government will make it hard to take profits off the island, through taxation or limits on currency exchange. Still more, like Ernesto Benitez, 37, an artist, cannot imagine a real open market. "They're going to set one price, per square foot, and that's it," he said.

Of course, he added, Cubans would respond by setting their own prices. And that, he hopes, might stimulate movement. Benitez and the woman he has lived with for nearly a decade broke up 18 months ago. Each is now dating someone new and there are nights, they admit, that get a little awkward. Only a narrow bathroom separates their bedrooms.

Katia Gonzalez, 48, whose parents left her the apartment (which Cuba permits), said she would consider selling for a fair price. What did she think her two-bedroom flat near the sea in Havana's best neighbourhood, could command?

"Oh, $25,000," she said. "A little more, maybe $30,000." In Miami, a similar apartment might cost ten times that - attracting Cuban American interest. "There's always money coming in from Miami," said corredore Gerardo. "The Cuban in Miami buys a house for his cousin in Cuba, and when he comes here in summer for a few months, he stays in it."

For now Cubans are trying to grasp how the new system will work. Classified ads are illegal, which is why corredores, like Jos spend their days moving through open air markets with notebooks listing flats on offer or wanted.

He already has two employees, and when the new law arrives, he expects to hire more.

"We have to get co-ordinated," he said. "It's coming."