Office figures: No Chișinău office-vacancy figure was found (searched 9 Oct 2026); the Belgrade MarketBeat series does not cover it. Map built 2026-10-09.
One point per building, from public records, open data and cited reports. Filter by type, size and how sure the evidence is; open one to see who says so and whether it could become homes.
The City Hall’s inventory is eight years old, was published as Word annexes in a ZIP, and 11 of its 50 qualifying entries could not be placed at house level. The electronic register of municipal property (Registrul electronic unic de evidență a patrimoniului) was not opened.
Check any building in Chișinău: could it become homes, and could the EHC model work there?
The articles do not give an address we could place, so these have no pin yet. From news reports, summed up in our own words with a link to each article — not checked on site by EHC.
The districts where empty space, the right zoning and a working neighbourhood come together, and the owners and programmes that open a door.
A large Soviet-era hotel stands boarded up on the main boulevard, with its fate tied to a court case and a revoked demolition permit.
Risk: Court-held asset, heritage dispute and a private owner who wanted to demolish; the building has also been unsafe for squatters.
The City Hall’s 2018 inventory records two lower-secondary school buildings (Botanica: 9,103 and 4,023 m²) and two kindergartens in Râșcani (2,526 and 849 m²) as wholly unused.
Risk: Eight-year-old data; a school or kindergarten may have reopened or been rebuilt since, and the City treats education buildings as protected use.
The State is selling the Glass Factory (14.8 ha, 44,719 m² of buildings) through an investment competition, in the city’s largest industrial belt.
Risk: Still a working factory with 330 staff; a very large single lot priced from 773 million lei.
Decisions, auctions and closures that change what becomes available, and when.
The Public Property Agency again offered the Glass Factory (investment competition from 773 million lei), Hotel Zarea (106 million), the Știința printing house (6.3 million), the Lumina textbook house (530,000 lei) and the Izomer premises (9.5 million); all five had been offered before without success.
The APP page lists the Izomer enterprise, which does not operate, with a deadline of 19 October 2026.
The New York Times (as cited on Wikipedia) reports the hotel boarded up with squatters inside and its demolition plans on hold.
Moldpres, cited on Wikipedia, reports the permit was revoked on 23 May 2022 after public pressure.
18 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 | 356 | 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 | 139 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 | 0 | Live 2026-10-09 | Copernicus open data (© European Union, Copernicus Land Monitoring Service 2006–2021, EEA) |
| 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 Includes the library’s public lighthouse conversions (src/scripts/data/reuse/lighthouses.json), shown under "Already converting" with a link to their library page. | 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) |
| Office buildings mapped on OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap contributors (via overpass.openstreetmap.fr) | Open API | 146 | Live 2026-10-09 | ODbL 1.0 |
| Brownfield land mapped on OpenStreetMap (named sites) OpenStreetMap contributors (via overpass.openstreetmap.fr) | Open API | 14 | Live 2026-10-09 | ODbL 1.0 |
| Whole municipal buildings the City Hall's 2018 inventory records as unused (90% or more of the area) Primăria municipiului Chișinău — Municipal Council inventory of municipal property, as at 1 January 2018 | Open download | 8 | Live 2026-10-09 | No licence stated (public information) — shown with credit to Chișinău City Hall |
| Wings, floors and wards of municipal buildings recorded as partly unused (300 m² or more) Primăria municipiului Chișinău — Municipal Council inventory of municipal property, as at 1 January 2018 | Open download | 30 | Live 2026-10-09 | No licence stated (public information) — shown with credit to Chișinău City Hall |
| State buildings the Public Property Register records as at least 90% unused (1 Jan 2025) Agenția Proprietății Publice — Registrul patrimoniului public (one register per ministry or agency) | Open download | 50 | Live 2026-10-09 | not stated — credited to the publisher |
| Buildings named in the news (each with its article) Local and national press, read by EHC Buildings the news reports empty, for sale or to let, to be demolished or being converted (src/scripts/data/reuse/news-building-leads.json; rules in src/lib/reuse/news-layer.ts). A report that names a building already on the map is shown on its card instead of a second point; one an open source contradicted, or that says the building is in use, is left out. Not checked on site. | EHC research | 2 | Live 2026-10-14 | Facts with a link to the article; the one-line summary is ours — no article text is republished |
| Probable era: estimated from a street photo (Panoramax, Mapillary, Google Street View) Panoramax and Mapillary contributors; Google Street View (research use agreed with Google, 14 Oct 2026); estimate by EHC with a vision model Where no register dates a building: its era read from a Panoramax or Mapillary photo looking at it — Google Street View only where no open photo answers (scripts/reuse/estimate-photo-eras.ts), only when the building is clearly visible and the model is confident, and only as “before 1945” or “1945 or later” — the split it got right for 89% of buildings with a register year in Amsterdam and Paris, and 89% from Street View pictures alone (photo-eras/calibration.json). An estimate: a sentence in the conversion check, never points. | Open API | scoring | Live 2026-10-14 | Open photos CC BY-SA 4.0 or Licence Ouverte 2.0 (per picture); Street View read for research only, never stored or shown; only the estimated era is published, never a photo |
Open data cannot see everything. Tell us about a building in Chișinău that stands empty or barely used; once we have checked it, it joins the map under “Reported by visitors (checked)”.
The nearest radars. All 149 cities in the atlas
The figure on each card: empty buildings on record.