Office figures: No broker publishes a current office vacancy rate for Bilbao. The Bizkaia cadastre records 234 office buildings in the city, 199 of them of about 1,000 m² or more (8 Oct 2026). Map built 2026-10-09.
Every building a record says stands empty, one point per building: filter by type, size and how sure the evidence is, and open one to see who says so. “Opportunities” switches to the co-op lens: public land, conversion potential and projects already under way, every source as its own layer.
Bilbao is in the Basque Country, whose provinces keep their own cadastres: the Spanish Catastro's bulk files and per-point floor areas do not cover it; the Bizkaia cadastre's INSPIRE layer is used instead.
0 empty buildings · colour = type, dark ring = confirmed
Check any building in Bilbao: could it become homes, and could the EHC model work there?
Buildings with evidence that they stand empty — a second source agrees, a public record names them, or we have checked them — ranked by a score you can read: co-op scale, daylight depth, a station nearby, a zone that allows homes, affordable land and an open route in. Checked buildings carry their result; nobody has visited them on site yet. Leerstandsmelder reports join the list when they sit in a large non-residential building and a second source agrees.
| Priority | Building | Floor area | Depth | Station | Conversion check | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 48 | Ruin, cadastral ref. 02016300200501043 Distressed or stranded (named) · residential · 3 storeys | 4,104 m² | 23.8 m | 186 m | A fit only | |
| 23 | Ruin, cadastral ref. 02000080035401001 Distressed or stranded (named) · residential · 2 storeys | — | — | 1,508 m | — |
Where empty offices, the right zoning and a working neighbourhood come together — and what could go wrong.
The city's main transformation area, where public plots become protected rental homes and old industrial buildings still stand.
Risk: Plots are ceded to the Basque Government's own developer; a co-op needs a dedicated plot or a building the plan keeps.
The City completes the ownership of half-public buildings here and rehabilitates them for social rent.
Risk: Rents are rising fastest in Bilbao La Vieja; the buildings are small and need full rehabilitation.
Most of the city's office buildings stand in the business centre, and the State still holds floors on Barroeta Aldamar.
Risk: Offices in the centre are mostly let; rents there are the city's highest (district 6: €14.50 per m²).
Who controls the space, and what a housing cooperative can actually do with them.
The City has an inventory of homes with signs of vacancy and plans to declare those empty for two years, charge the Basque levy and, at the extreme, use the law's forced-letting powers; owners are offered rehabilitation aid and rent guarantees. A co-op can offer to take such homes on long management or rehabilitation agreements.
The City's housing body manages over 4,000 homes and buys whole buildings where it already owns part, to rehabilitate them for social rent. A co-op can propose to rehabilitate and run such a building on a long lease.
The City cedes finished plots free of charge to the Basque Government, whose company Visesa builds protected rental homes (1,842 in Bilbao under construction or projected). A co-op can ask the City and the Basque Government for a plot or a building on a surface right in the next round.
Decisions, auctions and closures that change what becomes available, and when.
Bilbao's 2027 tax ordinances raise the property-tax surcharge on empty homes from 25% to 75% and give a 99% rebate to homes placed in public rental programmes.
New rental contracts in Bilbao averaged €971 a month in 2025, against €911 in 2024 and €706 in 2016.
The City announced a levy of €10 per m² a year from 2027 on homes empty for more than two years; its inventory finds 6,935 homes with signs of vacancy, 1,565 of them for two years or more.
Works began on 66 of 1,082 protected rental homes the Basque Government plans on Zorrotzaurre.
16 sources connected, 1 waiting for access. We only use data we may lawfully reuse; where a publisher blocks automated access we do not work around it — a person downloads it, or we ask for permission.
| Source | Access | Records | Status | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenStreetMap disused/abandoned tags and brownfields OpenStreetMap contributors | Open API | 18 | Live 2026-10-09 | ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors) |
| Rail, S-Bahn and U-Bahn stations (OpenStreetMap) OpenStreetMap contributors | Open API | scoring | Live 2026-10-09 | ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors) |
| Building heights: GlobalBuildingAtlas (TU Munich) Zhu, X. X., Chen, S., Zhang, F., Shi, Y., Wang, Y. (2025), Technical University of Munich GlobalBuildingAtlas: an open global and complete dataset of building polygons, heights and LoD1 3D models. Earth System Science Data 17(12), 6647–6668, doi:10.5194/essd-17-6647-2025. Read from the Parquet copy on Source Cooperative. Satellite-derived heights (typically 1.5–3 m error in Europe), turned into storeys with storey heights fitted on Berlin; used only where no register or official 3D model sizes the building. | Open download | 19 buildings sized | Live 2026-10-09 | CC BY-NC 4.0 (heights); footprints from OpenStreetMap and Microsoft: ODbL |
| Road noise (EU Environmental Noise Directive, Lden) European Environment Agency | Open API | scoring | Live 2026-10-09 | EEA standard re-use policy (attribution) |
| Leerstandsmelder.de — public reports of empty buildings Leerstandsmelder (Gängeviertel e.V., Hamburg) Shown while we ask Leerstandsmelder for permission. Reports since 2016 only, with the address, the month reported and a link to each entry; not checked by EHC. Each point says when a report has since been marked demolished, lived in, in interim use or rebuilt on Leerstandsmelder, and the owner type the reporter gave (private owners are never named). | Asking for permission | 0 | Pending 2026-10-09 | Credited to Leerstandsmelder.de; asking for permission |
| Open-ended property funds: buildings they report partly empty Open-ended real-estate funds (each point names its fund and report) German and Austrian open-ended public property funds must list every property with its vacancy (or letting) rate in their annual and half-year reports. scripts/reuse/import-fund-reports.ts reads those lists; properties at 10 % vacancy or more are shown, those at 25 % or more count as evidence. | Open download | 0 | Live 2026-10-09 | Published fund report (KAGB / KARBV property list), cited per point |
| Co-working spaces, department stores, banks, hotels and cinemas listed as permanently closed Overture Maps Foundation (closure data: BrightQuery company records) Places with operating_status "permanently_closed" in the monthly Overture release, read by scripts/reuse/import-overture-closures.ts and matched to the building they sit in. A closed business is usually one unit; names are shown only for companies, never for sole traders. | Open download | 0 | Live 2026-10-09 | CDLA Permissive 2.0 (Overture Maps Foundation) |
| Land without current use and stalled construction, mapped from satellite imagery (Copernicus Urban Atlas 2006–2018) European Environment Agency — Copernicus Land Monitoring Service Urban Atlas class 13400 (brownfields, demolition sites and gaps in the built-up area, 0.25 ha and up) compared across the 2006, 2012 and 2018 editions, so each plot says how long it has stood unused; plus construction sites (13300) already under way in 2012, and 2012 construction sites left unused by 2018. Read from the EEA's open ArcGIS services, the same way in every radar city. The 2021 edition (Copernicus Data Space) drops plots built on since 2018 where scripts/reuse/import-urban-atlas-2021.ts has been run. Points are context, never evidence of vacancy. | Open API | 8 | Live 2026-10-09 | Copernicus open data (© European Union, Copernicus Land Monitoring Service 2006–2021, EEA) |
| Office buildings of 1,000 m² or more, with depth and storeys (EUBUCCO) EUBUCCO (TU Berlin / ai4up), from the Spanish cadastre, Regione Lombardia’s building database and OpenStreetMap EUBUCCO harmonises Europe's building footprints with their use, height and age. Only buildings whose source names the use are kept — the cadastre's office class in Barcelona and Madrid, Lombardy's "commerciale" in Milan, building=office in OpenStreetMap for Dublin and Lisbon — never EUBUCCO's machine-learning guesses. The footprint gives the plan depth, so the conversion score treats them like the German cadastre's offices (scripts/reuse/import-eubucco.ts → src/scripts/data/reuse/eubucco/, ODbL). | Open download | 0 | Live 2026-10-09 | ODbL 1.0 (EUBUCCO v0.2; Dirección General del Catastro, Regione Lombardia, © OpenStreetMap contributors) |
| Stalled construction and buildings held by insolvent developers EHC research (dated press and court sources per point) Signa, Adler/Consus and other developer insolvencies since 2022 and stalled sites, each with its latest dated status (src/scripts/data/reuse/stalled-projects.json; news leads from scripts/reuse/mine-news.ts are reviewed before they join). | EHC research | 0 | Live 2026-10-09 | Cited publisher per point |
| Church buildings the dioceses and regional churches plan to give up Catholic dioceses and Protestant regional churches (their building plans), via EHC research Buildings a church body’s published building plan or recent reporting names as to be given up, without church funding, for sale or lease, or profaned (src/scripts/data/reuse/church-plans.json and brussels-churches.json). | EHC research | 0 | Live 2026-10-09 | Cited publisher per point |
| Named buildings and sites from EHC research (each with its own source) European Housing Coop research | EHC research | 5 | Live 2026-10-09 | Facts cited to their publishers |
| Year built and listing: OpenStreetMap building tags OpenStreetMap contributors start_date / construction_date and heritage / listed_status of the OpenStreetMap outline a record is matched to, where no register answers. Read with the outline match, not a separate query. | Open API | scoring | Live 2026-10-09 | ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors) |
| Buildings the Bizkaia cadastre records as ruined Bizkaiko Foru Aldundia — Diputación Foral de Bizkaia, Catastro de Bizkaia (InspireBizkaia, INSPIRE Buildings) | Open API | 6 | Live 2026-10-09 | CC BY 3.0 ES (InspireBizkaia terms of use; credit «©Bizkaiko Foru Aldundia» and the date of the last update) |
| Buildings the Bizkaia cadastre records as declined (about 300 m² or more) Bizkaiko Foru Aldundia — Diputación Foral de Bizkaia, Catastro de Bizkaia (InspireBizkaia, INSPIRE Buildings) | Open API | 114 | Live 2026-10-09 | CC BY 3.0 ES (InspireBizkaia terms of use; credit «©Bizkaiko Foru Aldundia» and the date of the last update) |
| Office buildings of about 1,000 m² or more (Bizkaia cadastre use) Bizkaiko Foru Aldundia — Diputación Foral de Bizkaia, Catastro de Bizkaia (InspireBizkaia, INSPIRE Buildings) | Open API | 199 | Live 2026-10-09 | CC BY 3.0 ES (InspireBizkaia terms of use; credit «©Bizkaiko Foru Aldundia» and the date of the last update) |
| Heritage at risk in Bilbao — Hispania Nostra's Lista Roja Hispania Nostra — Lista Roja del Patrimonio | Open download | 2 | Live 2026-10-09 | All rights reserved (Hispania Nostra, aviso legal): only the entry's name, the street, the date added and a link to its card are kept — no descriptions or photos; credited "Hispania Nostra — Lista Roja" |
Open data cannot see everything. Tell us about a building in Bilbao that stands empty or barely used; once we have checked it, it joins the map under “Reported by visitors (checked)”.
The other radars in the same country and the nearest beyond. All 134 cities in the atlas
The figure on each card: empty buildings on record.