Permanent residency changes your standing
Cuban property law works for citizens and permanent residents. That is why becoming a permanent resident is the pivotal step: it moves you from outside the domestic market to inside it. Once you hold that status, the home-sale framework created by Decreto-Ley 288 of 2011 can apply to you much as it does to Cuban nationals.
Residency is not granted casually or quickly. It involves qualifying grounds, official approval and genuine ties to Cuba, and it should be pursued for its own sake, not merely as a device to acquire a beach flat. Anyone treating residency as a checkbox on the way to a condo has the logic backwards; the residency is the substantive thing, and any future ownership is downstream of it.
Marriage and inheritance
Marriage to a Cuban citizen is a well-recognised path that, together with the appropriate residency and legal steps, can allow property to be held in your name. Inheritance is another: a foreigner who inherits from a Cuban relative may come to hold a home through succession rather than purchase.
Both routes are real, but both are slow and document-heavy, and both depend on authentic personal circumstances. They are not transactions you arrange for convenience, and treating them as loopholes tends to end badly. Nominee arrangements, where a home is held in someone else's name on your behalf, are a classic trap: they can leave the foreigner with no enforceable rights at all if the relationship or the arrangement breaks down.
US persons: extra caution
If you are a US person, remember that OFAC's Cuban Assets Control Regulations (31 CFR Part 515) and Helms-Burton Title III apply regardless of your Cuban legal status. Even a lawful Cuban route can create serious US legal exposure around property. Specialist legal advice is essential before you act.
The honest summary is that residency, marriage and inheritance are the genuine doors to ownership, but they are heavy doors that open slowly and only for real lives, not for holiday plans. Approached patiently and lawfully they are legitimate; approached as shortcuts they are where people lose money.