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Reuse radar

Bremen

Bremen's task force against problem properties had inspected 91 buildings by August 2025 and kept 50 as cases — against some 120,000 buildings in the city — and the Senate says the law gives it no power over empty commercial buildings that are not dangerous. The cadastre flags 44 buildings as unused or abandoned (13 large enough to map), and the city's own big empty-building stories are public: the former Horten store bought by the municipal development company, the freed Klinikum Links der Weser site and the Blumenthal town hall.
Vacant office space5.4%of the office stock stands empty (the floor area is not published)
Empty buildings on record205and 16 more with an empty shop, flat or floor; of all 221, 13 confirmed, 1 likely
Flagged unused13buildings in the official cadastre; 3 have 3,000 m² or more
Homes potential—not in the economic model’s office data yet

Office figures: WFB Wirtschaftsförderung Bremen, Immobilienmarkt-Report 2025 (data for 2024): the office vacancy rate rose from 4.5% in 2023 to 5.4%; the WFB expects revitalisation and flexible-use concepts to gain ground. No vacant floor area is published. Map built 2026-10-09.

Bremen city profileReuse atlas: all of Europe

A tour in 3D

An empty building in Bremen, and what it could become

A building checked against today's sources and found empty — a site that could be well suited to the EHC model. A short film: how it could come back to life, with what our conversion check and economic model say it could hold. A potential we spotted, not a plan.

Together, room for ≈ 19 homes — a potential, not a plan.

  1. Former vocational school for home economics, Sebaldsbrücker Heerstraße 98 (Hemelingen)Sebaldsbrücker Heerstraße 98, 28309 Bremen · ≈ 19 homes
  • activated ground floor
  • shared rooms
  • furnished mid-term flats
  • affordable long-term homes

The map

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.

Loading map…

0 empty buildings · colour = type, dark ring = confirmed

Check any building in Bremen: could it become homes, and could the EHC model work there?

Where to look first

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.

PriorityBuildingFloor areaDepthStationConversion checkActions
86Former vocational school for home economics, Sebaldsbrücker Heerstraße 98 (Hemelingen)Confirmed empty by EHCOnly as a partner
Public building named vacant
2,343 m²15.5 m302 mA fit only
51Dilapidated villa in the Schlosspark (Hemelingen)
Public building named vacant
——652 m—

Homes standing empty

Of 188 Leerstandsmelder reports on the map, 178 sit in a building we can identify — 108 of them homes. Most are single flats or buildings below co-op scale. These are whole buildings of flats that people report empty, ranked by a reactivation score: co-op scale, whether the whole building is empty, how recent the report is, location and land. A building of flats needs no change of use. Reports are public and not checked by us — each card links to its entry on Leerstandsmelder.

ScoreBuildingFloor areaReportedActions
78Doventorstr. 30
Apartment building · 5 storeys · Whole building
1,288 m²Oct 2018
69Buntentorsteinweg 318/20
House · 4 storeys · Whole building
882 m²May 2023
48Lothringer Straße 7a
Apartment building · Extent not stated
1,614 m²Jul 2023
43Osterdeich 68
Apartment building · 3 storeys · Extent not stated
849 m²Oct 2025
39Innsbrucker Str. 38
Apartment building · 4 storeys · Extent not stated
752 m²Mar 2022
39Rockwinkeler Landstraße 114a
Detached house · 1 storey · Extent not stated
735 m²Jun 2022
35Wätjenstraße 92
Apartment building · 4 storeys · Extent not stated
630 m²Oct 2025

Districts where conversion makes sense

Where empty offices, the right zoning and a working neighbourhood come together — and what could go wrong.

A hand outlining a neighbourhood on a city map, with small houses drawn inside

Bremen-Nord (Blumenthal)

One of the city's most disadvantaged districts, with a redevelopment area since 2022; the empty listed town hall is its key project and the former wool-combing site next door is becoming a school and training quarter.

  • Rathaus Blumenthal empty for years (Senate paper, Apr 2024)
  • Federal application for the 'Quartiershaus' in April 2024
  • Redevelopment area designated 2022; integrated concept March 2023

Risk: The city's own answer for the town hall is a community use funded by a federal programme, not housing.

1 source

City centre (Altstadt and Bahnhofsvorstadt)

The municipal development company BRESTADT holds the former Horten store and the Parkhaus Mitte plot, with housing the stated aim; the former Bundeswehr high-rise at Falkenstraße 45 shows an empty tower turned into subsidised flats.

  • Former Kaufhof/Horten bought in Nov 2024 for €37.2 million
  • Three options for Papenstraße 5 weighed on 8 Jul 2025
  • Falkenstraße 45: final construction phase in Feb 2025

Risk: The Horten building is deep and tall-storeyed, and a first structural check raised doubts about keeping it; demolition and new build are on the table.

2 sources

Neustadt

Four of the eight long-empty commercial buildings the coalition groups name in the Senate paper of September 2025 are in the Neustadt (a former supermarket, a furniture house, a distillery and part of a care home), and four of the nine commercial cases in the task force's anonymised list lie in the Neustadt districts.

  • Gottfried-Menken-Straße 14 (former Netto) named empty
  • Four of 9 task-force commercial cases lie in the Neustadt districts
  • No legal basis to act on harmless empty commercial property (Senate, 2 Sep 2025)

Risk: Owners are private and the Senate says it has no legal tool against harmless empty commercial buildings; no addresses are given for most of them.

1 source

Owners and routes in

Who controls the space, and what a housing cooperative can actually do with them.

A door key on a doorstep with a drawn path leading to an open door
City agency

BRESTADT GmbH — Bremen's municipal development company

Holds the former Horten store (bought Nov 2024), the Parkhaus Mitte plot and, from 31 December 2029, about 6.2 ha at Klinikum Links der Weser. Its brief is housing mixed with social, cultural and non-commercial uses; a co-operative can offer to take a block or a house group inside these projects.

2 sources
Public owner

Immobilien Bremen and the Senate's finance department — municipal buildings

The municipal property agency manages empty buildings such as the Blumenthal town hall and the Hemelingen school and villa. In 2024 a district council (Burglesum) asked for a table of every empty building under the city's control with its empty area, obstacles to marketing and planned use — no such list is published, so ask for it per district.

2 sources
Allocation rule

Task force against problem properties (GVBP) and the housing-protection law

The city can act when residential space stands empty for more than six months and has returned up to 50 flats to the market in four years; the task force keeps a list of 50 cases that is not public. Trusteeship has been used once, in Huchting in 2024 after an owner's insolvency (a first, for unhealthy living conditions, not vacancy); a co-operative can offer to buy or lease buildings owners give up.

1 source
Subsidy

Federal programme 'Gewerbe zu Wohnen'

From July 2026 the federal government pays up to €30,000 a flat for turning heated non-residential buildings into homes (€300 million for 2026) — relevant to the offices in the city's Bahnhofsvorstadt and the shops in the centre.

1 source

Signals to watch

Decisions, auctions and closures that change what becomes available, and when.

  1. 2025-12-09
    Senate: no fines yet for illegal vacancy

    Answering the CDU, the Senate said no fines had been imposed under the housing-protection law for a missing permit application; case numbers for 2023 to September 2025 are in a table in the paper.

    1 source
  2. 2025-09-02
    Task force: 91 buildings inspected, 50 cases

    The Senate's answer to the coalition groups says the 2024 task force had inspected 91 problem properties and kept 50 as cases, and that it has no legal tool against empty commercial buildings that pose no danger.

    1 source
  3. 2025-07-08
    Three options for the former Horten store

    The Senate paper weighs keeping and converting the building, a part-conversion with new parts, or three new buildings.

    1 source
  4. 2025-03-25
    Hospital land to BRESTADT in 2029

    About 6.2 ha at Klinikum Links der Weser is to pass to BRESTADT on 31 Dec 2029, with re-use 'without long vacancy'.

    1 source
  5. 2025-02-11
    Falkenstraße tower in its final construction phase

    The former Bundeswehr high-rise, converted by GEWOBA into housing with many subsidised flats, was due to finish at the end of 2025.

    1 source
  6. 2024-04-23
    Blumenthal town hall goes into a federal application

    The Senate approved applying to the 'Nationale Projekte des Städtebaus' programme to convert the long-empty listed town hall.

    1 source

Sources and freshness

20 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.

Show every source, its licence and when we last read it
SourceAccessRecordsStatusLicence
Federal property for sale (BImA)
Bundesanstalt für Immobilienaufgaben (BImA)
Live sales of federal buildings and land (the open API behind the BImA property search; rentals, garages and parking left out). A disposal is an open route in; it does not say the building stands empty.
Open API0Live
2026-10-09
No licence stated — public sale offers, credited to the BImA
Forced auctions of commercial property (zvg-portal)
Justizportal des Bundes und der Länder
Non-residential objects only; shown until the hearing date. Hamburg courts do not publish here.
Open API0Live
2026-10-09
Official public notice (§ 39 ZVG)
OpenStreetMap disused/abandoned tags and brownfields
OpenStreetMap contributors
Open API174Live
2026-10-09
ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors)
Rail, S-Bahn and U-Bahn stations (OpenStreetMap)
OpenStreetMap contributors
Open APIscoringLive
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 download609 buildings sizedLive
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 APIscoringLive
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 permission188Live
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 download1Live
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 download0Live
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 API79Live
2026-10-09
Copernicus open data (© European Union, Copernicus Land Monitoring Service 2006–2021, EEA)
Property companies in insolvency, at the property their purpose names
Insolvency courts (Insolvenzbekanntmachungen), structured by OpenRegister
Companies in preliminary or opened insolvency proceedings whose registered business purpose speaks of land or buildings (scripts/reuse/import-insolvencies.ts, OpenRegister API — the portal itself disallows automated access, so it is never fetched). A company is placed at the street its purpose names; the rest are leads in the admin. An insolvent owner signals a possible sale, not vacancy: weak evidence.
Open API0Live
2026-10-09
Official notices (§ 5 UrhG, source credited), via the OpenRegister API
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 research0Live
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 research0Live
2026-10-09
Cited publisher per point
Named buildings and sites from EHC research (each with its own source)
European Housing Coop research
EHC research8Live
2026-10-09
Facts cited to their publishers
Commercial listings (ImmoScout24 / immowelt)
Scout24 / AVIV
Blocked to automated access; we do not work around that. Request drafted in docs/reuse-radar/outreach/.
Asking for permission0PendingProprietary — API or data partnership requested
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 APIscoringLive
2026-10-09
ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors)
Buildings the cadastre flags unused or out of service (ALKIS)
Landesamt GeoInformation Bremen — ALKIS NAS without owner data (GDI-DE INSPIRE download), read by scripts/reuse/import-bremen-alkis.ts
Open download13Live
2026-10-09
No licence stated on the download record; Bremen's geodata services carry 'CC BY, source: Landesamt GeoInformation Bremen' — used with that credit
Office, administration and public-purpose buildings in the cadastre (ALKIS)
Landesamt GeoInformation Bremen — ALKIS NAS without owner data, read by scripts/reuse/import-bremen-alkis.ts
Open download313Live
2026-10-09
No licence stated on the download record; Bremen's geodata services carry 'CC BY, source: Landesamt GeoInformation Bremen' — used with that credit
Federal properties with empty offices or flats (BImA list, 1 Jan 2023)
Bundesanstalt für Immobilienaufgaben (BImA) — lists released under the Freedom of Information Act via FragDenStaat (request #269761); read by scripts/reuse/import-bima-vacancy-2023.ts
Freedom of information8Live
2026-10-09
No licence stated — official lists released under the IFG and published by FragDenStaat; used with credit to the BImA and FragDenStaat
Office buildings mapped in OpenStreetMap
OpenStreetMap contributors (via overpass.openstreetmap.fr)
Open API646Live
2026-10-09
ODbL 1.0
Brownfield land mapped in OpenStreetMap
OpenStreetMap contributors (via overpass.openstreetmap.fr)
Open API87Live
2026-10-09
ODbL 1.0

What this radar cannot see yet

  • No open list of empty buildings: the task force's list of 50 cases is anonymised in the Senate paper (no addresses), and the Senate says it cannot break vacancy cases down by district.
  • Flat vacancy: the last published series is empirica's 2021 study for the Senate (5,845 empty flats in 2019 by the accounting method, 3,172 market-active; 8,645 in the 2011 census); no recent city count was read.
  • The cadastre flag is partial: 44 of 231,905 buildings, many sheds or buildings awaiting demolition; the open data gives no owner.
  • Council papers: the Bremen parliament's documents are PDFs without an open interface; the Senate papers behind the curated sites were found through web search, not mined in bulk.
  • Leerstandsmelder holds 863 places in Bremen's box in the 4 Oct 2026 snapshot (many from 2012 to 2017), the most of any city in this wave; the spec leaves them to the shared source.
  • Floor area: the cadastre records storeys for 168,892 buildings; Bremen's LoD2 model is a further source (gdi2.geo.bremen.de/inspire/download/LoD).

Know an empty building we have missed?

Open data cannot see everything. Tell us about a building in Bremen that stands empty or barely used; once we have checked it, it joins the map under “Reported by visitors (checked)”.

A phone held up to photograph an empty shopfront, with a map pin drawn above it

We publish the address, the kind of building and your description once we have checked it — never your email. Please do not name the people who own or live in a building.

Radars nearby

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.

Amsterdam, Netherlands60empty buildings on recordBerlin, Germany1,875empty buildings on recordBielefeld, Germany101empty buildings on recordBochum, Germany155empty buildings on recordBonn, Germany141empty buildings on recordCologne, Germany374empty buildings on recordDortmund, Germany304empty buildings on recordDresden, Germany341empty buildings on recordDuisburg, Germany141empty buildings on recordDüsseldorf, Germany46empty buildings on recordEindhoven, Netherlands3empty buildings on recordEssen, Germany224empty buildings on recordFrankfurt am Main, Germany208empty buildings on recordGroningen, Netherlands10empty buildings on recordHamburg, Germany524empty buildings on recordHannover, Germany197empty buildings on recordLeipzig, Germany342empty buildings on recordMannheim, Germany82empty buildings on recordMunich, Germany316empty buildings on recordNuremberg, Germany109empty buildings on recordStuttgart, Germany175empty buildings on recordUtrecht, Netherlands13empty buildings on recordWuppertal, Germany224empty buildings on record