How to inspect a home in Cuba before buying it

In Cuba there is no home-inspection industry, no survey report to commission and no standard the seller must meet. What you see on the visit is the entire due diligence on the building itself — and much of the housing stock is between sixty and a hundred years old, has been extended without permits and has spent years without maintenance materials being available at any price.

This guide is the checklist to take on the visit. It is ordered from the defects that can cost more than the discount you negotiated down to the ones that are worth a coat of paint.

Go prepared, and go twice

Take a torch, a phone with a good camera, a bottle of water and, if you can, someone who has built or repaired something in their life. Visit at least twice, at different times of day, and try to make one of the visits after rain — a roof only reveals itself when it is wet.

Ask before you arrive what the water schedule is and whether there will be electricity, and try to be there when both are on. A house you cannot test is a house you have not seen.

• A torch, for roof voids, under sinks and inside the electrical panel.
• The camera on your phone, photographing every defect with something for scale.
• A small bottle of water, to pour into a shower tray or floor drain and watch it run.
• A note of the water schedule, so you can visit while there is supply.

The roof: the most expensive thing to get wrong

Cuban roofs come in a few recognisable types, and they age very differently. A concrete slab (placa) is the safest bet: check the surface for cracks and pooling, and look at the ceiling below for stains. A roof of beams and tiles or of wooden joists is much more exposed to rot and termites, and one of light sheeting (fibrocemento or zinc) tells you the space below is likely to be an extension rather than original construction.

Inside, look up in every room, particularly in corners and where the ceiling meets an outside wall. Dark rings, flaking paint and salt-white blooms all mean water has been there. A recently painted ceiling in an otherwise unpainted house is not a coincidence.

Structure: cracks that matter and cracks that do not

Fine, shallow cracks in plaster are usually cosmetic. What deserves attention are cracks that run diagonally from the corners of doors and windows, cracks wide enough to slide a coin into, cracks that continue on both faces of the same wall, and any that have been filled and reappeared.

Look at where the building meets its neighbours — much of Havana is built wall to wall, and a neighbour’s collapse or unpermitted extension becomes your problem. In upper floors, check whether an internal mezzanine (barbacoa) has been added and whether the original structure was designed to carry it.

• Diagonal cracks from window and door corners.
• Doors and windows that no longer close square, a sign of movement.
• Visible rebar with rust staining on balconies and lintels.
• Floors that slope noticeably or bounce underfoot.
• Added mezzanines and extensions with no documentation.

Damp: where it comes from decides the cost

Damp from the roof is a roof problem. Damp rising from the floor along the base of walls is much harder and more expensive to solve, and in coastal areas — a good part of Havana — salt in the ground makes it a permanent battle. Damp on a shared wall is often the neighbour’s plumbing, which means the fix is not entirely yours to make.

Trust your nose as much as your eyes. A closed room that smells of damp has damp, however freshly it has been painted, and mould behind furniture that has not been moved in years tells you more than the wall in the middle of the living room.

Water, electricity, gas: the Cuban specifics

Water is the single most important service to interrogate. Ask whether the home has its own cistern, its capacity, whether there is a pump and a tank on the roof, and what the actual supply schedule in that street is — not what it should be. A house with an own cistern and a working pump is worth measurably more than the same house without them, and everyone in the market knows it.

On electricity, open the panel and look: modern breakers or old fuse wire, copper or aluminium cable, and whether the installation is 110v, 220v or both. Air conditioning and most imported appliances need 220v, and rewiring a whole house is not a weekend job. Count the sockets in each room — a house with two per room has never been rewired.

Termites, woodwork and everything else

Termites (comején) are endemic and go for anything wooden: door and window frames, roof beams, built-in wardrobes and staircases. Press a screwdriver or a key into the underside of window frames and the foot of door frames — sound wood resists, infested wood gives. Look for fine sawdust piles and mud tubes along walls.

Then the ordinary things: do the windows close and lock, do the doors fit, are the bathroom fittings and kitchen usable or entirely to be replaced, is the flooring intact. These matter less individually, but they add up to a realistic figure for what you will spend in the first year — which is the number you should be negotiating with.

Look outside the house too

Walk the street at different hours. Ask the neighbours about water, power cuts, drainage in heavy rain and anything happening with the building. In Cuba, neighbours are the most reliable and least filtered source of information you will find, and they have no reason to sell you anything.

Check the practical geography: how far to a bus route, whether the street floods, whether a ground floor could host a small business, whether there is anywhere to park. These are the factors that will decide how easily you resell.

When to walk away

Some defects are negotiable and some are exits. Structural movement that is still active, a roof needing full replacement on a house priced as if it did not, an unpermitted extension the seller has no intention of legalising, or a technical description that does not match what you are standing in — each of those is a reason to stop, not a reason for a discount.

And a reminder that the building is only half the inspection: the other half is the paperwork. A structurally perfect house with an unresolved inheritance is not for sale, whatever the seller says.