Office figures: Avison Young, The Big Nine, Q2 2026 — Edinburgh office vacancy 7.3% (up 52 basis points on the quarter), Grade A vacancy 0.7%; no availability figure in square feet is published on the page. 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.
No open list of empty business premises: the council does not publish its empty-property rates accounts, and the Scottish Assessors' valuation roll is searchable one address at a time only.
0 empty buildings · colour = type, dark ring = confirmed
Check any building in Edinburgh: 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 71 | Former Royal High School Public building named vacant · 7 storeys · 2 other sources nearby | 5,187 m² | 21.4 m | 684 m | A fit only | |
| 61 | Tynecastle High School City vacancy listing · Schools | 10,986 m² | 18.3 m | 948 m | A fit only | |
| 48 | Former police station, Abbeyhill City vacancy listing · 1 other source nearby | — | 13.6 m | 1,079 m | — | |
| 43 | Former Powderhall waste transfer station Public building named vacant · 1 other source nearby | — | — | 1,701 m | — | |
| 43 | Edinburgh and Leith Gas Works offices Stalled or insolvent project · 2 other sources nearby | 2,666 m² | 26.7 m | 3,085 m | B fit only | |
| 43 | Madelvic car factory production block Stalled or insolvent project · 3 other sources nearby | 2,819 m² | 44.9 m | — | C fit only | |
| 43 | Astley Ainslie Hospital Balfour Pavilion West Wing City vacancy listing · Hospitals | 7,334 m² | 24.3 m | 2,135 m | A fit only | |
| 43 | Generating Station City vacancy listing · Electricity Supply | 4,800 m² | 20.2 m | 1,440 m | B fit only | |
| 33 | Madelvic 1 City vacancy listing · Manufacturing · 2 other sources nearby | — | — | — | — | |
| 33 | 165 Leith Walk City vacancy listing · Storage · 1 other source nearby | — | — | 2,054 m | — |
Where empty offices, the right zoning and a working neighbourhood come together — and what could go wrong.
The most buildings at risk in one place, among them the council's former Royal High School.
Risk: Small listed buildings and upper floors; HES inspections date from 2020–2021.
Council-owned sites with vacant buildings and the empty gas works offices.
Risk: Industrial heritage with consents already granted to private developers.
The city's largest cluster of vacant and derelict land around the harbour and the Madelvic factory.
Risk: Mostly land; port and private owners; some contamination.
A hospital estate with vacant listed pavilions allocated for housing-led use.
Risk: Disposal and the place brief decide what happens; heritage constraints.
Who controls the space, and what a housing cooperative can actually do with them.
A community body can ask the council (or another listed public body) to transfer land or buildings by sale, lease or other rights under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. Gracemount House shows the route working: the council kept the mansion off the market during the request, and the trust raised £167,340 to buy it.
Grants of £5,000 to £1 million help community-led organisations in urban and rural Scotland buy land and buildings, with support to develop the project first.
From 1 January 2027 owners of homes empty for a year or more pay a 300% premium (decided 27 August 2026), up from 100% — pressure that can bring owners of empty flats to sell or lease.
Decisions, auctions and closures that change what becomes available, and when.
Avison Young puts Edinburgh's office vacancy at 7.3% in the second quarter of 2026, up 52 basis points, with Grade A space at 0.7%.
The Scottish Government published the 2025 site register: 47 sites in Edinburgh (111 ha), six with vacant buildings.
The council decided to raise the council-tax premium on long-term empty homes from 100% to 300%, effective 1 January 2027.
In September 2025 Edinburgh had 3,080 homes empty for six months or more (2,531 for over a year) and 3,384 more exempt from council tax as unoccupied.
Gracemount Mansion Development Trust won £167,340 from the National Lottery Community Fund to buy the council's disused mansion through a community asset transfer.
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 | 129 | 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 | 314 buildings sized | Live 2026-10-09 | CC BY-NC 4.0 (heights); footprints from OpenStreetMap and Microsoft: ODbL |
| Storeys where nothing better sizes the building: EUBUCCO v0.2 EUBUCCO (TU Berlin / ai4up) EUBUCCO v0.2, ODbL 1.0 — Edinburgh has no open register or 3D model with storeys. Used only for buildings nothing else sizes: storeys mapped in OpenStreetMap, else EUBUCCO’s own estimate. | Open download | 28 buildings sized | Live 2026-10-09 | ODbL 1.0 |
| 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 | 41 | 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 | EHC research | 8 | 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) |
| Sites with vacant buildings — Scottish Vacant and Derelict Land Survey Scottish Government (Communities Analysis Division) — Scottish Vacant and Derelict Land Survey: Site Register 2025, from the councils' returns (City of Edinburgh Council) | Open download | 6 | Live 2026-10-09 | Open Government Licence v3.0 (gov.scot; the same survey is OGL v3 on the Improvement Service's Spatial Hub) — the register page says the councils own the site information and asks for the council's permission before reuse; credited to the Scottish Government and City of Edinburgh Council |
| Publicly owned vacant and derelict land — Scottish Vacant and Derelict Land Survey Scottish Government (Communities Analysis Division) — Scottish Vacant and Derelict Land Survey: Site Register 2025, from the councils' returns (City of Edinburgh Council) | Open download | 8 | Live 2026-10-09 | Open Government Licence v3.0 (gov.scot; the same survey is OGL v3 on the Improvement Service's Spatial Hub) — the register page says the councils own the site information and asks for the council's permission before reuse; credited to the Scottish Government and City of Edinburgh Council |
| Other vacant and derelict land — Scottish Vacant and Derelict Land Survey Scottish Government (Communities Analysis Division) — Scottish Vacant and Derelict Land Survey: Site Register 2025, from the councils' returns (City of Edinburgh Council) | Open download | 33 | Live 2026-10-09 | Open Government Licence v3.0 (gov.scot; the same survey is OGL v3 on the Improvement Service's Spatial Hub) — the register page says the councils own the site information and asks for the council's permission before reuse; credited to the Scottish Government and City of Edinburgh Council |
| Vacant buildings on the Buildings at Risk Register Historic Environment Scotland — Buildings at Risk Register for Scotland (BARR), read from buildingsatrisk.org.uk | Open download | 47 | Live 2026-10-09 | Open Government Licence v3.0 — HES offers BARR as one of its portal spatial downloads, all OGL v3 (portal.historicenvironment.scot/termsandconditions): “Contains Historic Environment Scotland and OS data © Historic Environment Scotland and Crown Copyright and database right 2024, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.” (The buildingsatrisk.org.uk website itself says all rights reserved.) |
| Other buildings at risk (Buildings at Risk Register) Historic Environment Scotland — Buildings at Risk Register for Scotland (BARR), read from buildingsatrisk.org.uk | Open download | 4 | Live 2026-10-09 | Open Government Licence v3.0 — HES offers BARR as one of its portal spatial downloads, all OGL v3 (portal.historicenvironment.scot/termsandconditions): “Contains Historic Environment Scotland and OS data © Historic Environment Scotland and Crown Copyright and database right 2024, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.” (The buildingsatrisk.org.uk website itself says all rights reserved.) |
| Office buildings mapped in OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap contributors | Open API | 230 | Live 2026-10-09 | ODbL |
Open data cannot see everything. Tell us about a building in Edinburgh 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.