the way it was explained to me about cuba (by cubans) is that each person could own a single residence. a corporation or organization cannot own a residence. non-citizens cannot own real property / residences either. so a married couple of cuban nationals could own the place they lived in and rent another place out to vacationers, emigrants, whoever.

if you wanted a place and there was a lot unoccupied, the government would provide you with title and the material to build it (as available, because the embargo fucks with material availability). if someone was selling a place and you wanted to buy it, the government would provide a 0% interest loan for you to buy it from the seller.

if you sold a place, the government took 30% of whatever amount of value it had increased during your ownership.

it all seemed fairly reasonable and incentivized people to take care of places they owned, but prevented psychos from rapidly building wealth through speculating & flipping / hoarding, locked out foreign "investors", and put the breaks on the whole "net present value" growth aspect of debt financing.