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Reuse radar

Vitoria-Gasteiz

Vitoria-Gasteiz charges 50% more property tax (IBI) on homes left empty for two years: 4,120 homes paid it in 2026, down from 5,387 in 2025, and the Basque Government counted 2,262 unoccupied homes (1.9% of the stock) when it declared the city a stressed rental market in October 2025. The Basque Government lets 571 private empty homes in the city through Bizigune (February 2024), while some 8,000 people were waiting for public rental at that date. The larger empty buildings are mostly public or institutional: palaces in the old town, a former bank headquarters and a convent.
An empty building in Vitoria-Gasteiz with homes, balconies and neighbours drawn onto it in ink
Empty buildings on record
62
from 7 open sources
Vacant office space
—
not yet measured
Homes potential
—
not in the economic model’s office data yet

Office figures: No broker we found publishes office vacancy for Vitoria-Gasteiz; the nearest figure is a January 2022 Idealista count of 144 offices for sale and 114 to let, concentrated in the centre (Postas, General Álava, Florida, San Prudencio), and eight office-to-housing licences creating 14 homes in 2021. Map built 2026-10-15.

Empty buildings in Vitoria-Gasteiz

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.

Vitoria-Gasteiz is in Álava, whose foral cadastre is separate from the Spanish Catastro: Catastro's bulk files and per-point floor areas do not cover it. The Álava cadastre's INSPIRE layer (condition, use, storeys, height) is used instead; no floor-area source reads it yet, so floor areas come from satellite heights.

Loading map…
Colour = type of building named officially likely reported
Missing a building?

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

Where conversion makes sense, and who to talk to

The districts where empty space, the right zoning and a working neighbourhood come together, and the owners and programmes that open a door.

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

Casco Medieval (Alde Zaharra)

The old town holds the City's empty palaces and Ensanche 21's decayed blocks, and its renewal plan admits the large operations never happened.

  • Only 1 of the 37 public and private execution units planned in the 2006 PERI was carried out; 685 rehabilitation files in 17 years, about 40 a year (PERI review, December 2023)
  • Ensanche 21 holds 66.6% of Correría 127 and 50% of Zapatería 98; EUR 3.5 million set aside in June 2026 for 14-16 young people's rental homes
  • Escoriaza-Esquivel (over 5,000 m2, City-owned since 2010) unused for a decade as of 2024

Risk: Listed buildings and split ownership make every project slow; blocks that wait too long are demolished rather than restored, as at Kutxi 79.

3 sources

Ensanche (Zabalgunea, city centre)

The 19th-century centre is where empty offices and former bank and state buildings sit; most change hands only after long vacancies.

  • Postas 42 (2,691 m2) failed at five auctions from EUR 4.738 million and sold for EUR 2.06 million in October 2024, now a 40-room hotel
  • Edificio Arca (5,874 m2) bought by the Basque Government in 2023 for about EUR 7 million for offices; works from late 2026
  • Dato 20 under scaffolding since July 2021, with one tenant left (October 2025)

Risk: Central buildings go to hotels and public offices rather than homes, and the July 2026 ground-floor ordinance excludes the Ensanche.

3 sources

Aretxabaleta-Goikolarra (Bustaldea)

Ensanche 21 bought flats in five 1960s blocks once marked for demolition and now plans to refurbish them for rent.

  • 5 residential blocks from the 1960s; Europan 18 design 'Care Blanket' chosen
  • Up to 70% of private owners' costs can be covered by Basque Government grants
  • Timetable: owner talks Sept-Dec 2026, works tendered 2028, completion 2030

Risk: The promise has slipped by seven years (2023 to 2030) and ownership is split between the City company and residents who did not sell.

1 source

Signals to watch

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

  1. 2026-08-14City pays to demolish Kutxi 79

    The City awarded the demolition of the 1864 building at Cuchillería 79 to Artarria for EUR 117,769.37, after its owners could pay for neither repair nor demolition.

    1 source
  2. 2026-07-31Up to 1,000 ground-floor premises may become homes

    The City approved the draft ordinance letting street-level premises become permanently protected homes; it now goes to the full council.

    1 source
  3. 2026-06-30EUR 3.5 million for four decayed old-town buildings

    Correría 127-129 and Zapatería 98-100 are to be demolished and rebuilt as 14-16 social rental homes for young people.

    1 source
2 earlier signals
  1. 2026-05-14
    Homes paying the empty-home surcharge fall by almost a quarter

    4,120 homes paid the 50% IBI surcharge in 2026 against 5,387 in 2025; 4,983 owners were notified and 863 of 958 objections were accepted.

    1 source
  2. 2025-10-30
    Vitoria-Gasteiz becomes a stressed rental market

    Rent caps apply for three years to 97.92% of the population; the Basque Government's filing counted 2,262 unoccupied homes (1.9% of the stock), about 54.8% of which could be brought back through its programmes. Average rent of contracts in force reached EUR 764.1 a month by 31 December 2025 (EMAL).

    2 sources

Sources, and what we cannot see

19 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.

Every source, its licence and when we last read it
SourceAccessRecordsStatusLicence
OpenStreetMap disused/abandoned tags and brownfields
OpenStreetMap contributors
Open API303Live
2026-10-15
ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors)
Rail, S-Bahn and U-Bahn stations (OpenStreetMap)
OpenStreetMap contributors
Open APIscoringLive
2026-10-15
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 download46 buildings sizedLive
2026-10-15
CC BY-NC 4.0 (heights); footprints from OpenStreetMap and Microsoft: ODbL
Road noise (EU Environmental Noise Directive, Lden)
European Environment Agency
Open APIscoringLive
2026-10-15
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 permission0Pending
2026-10-15
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 download0Live
2026-10-15
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
2026-10-15
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 API149Live
2026-10-15
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 download0Live
2026-10-15
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 research0Live
2026-10-15
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
2026-10-15
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 research11Live
2026-10-15
Facts cited to their publishers
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 research0Live
2026-10-15
Facts with a link to the article; the one-line summary is ours — no article text is republished
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
2026-10-15
ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors)
Year built: Spanish cadastre (via EUBUCCO)
Dirección General del Catastro, via EUBUCCO v0.2 (Milojevic-Dupont et al.)
The cadastre’s construction year of the building a record sits in (or the nearest within 5 m), as EUBUCCO took it from the Spanish cadastre’s INSPIRE buildings. A cadastral building is everything on one parcel; its year can be that of a major refurbishment. Not the Basque Country or Navarre, which keep their own cadastres.
Open downloadscoringLive
2026-10-15
ODbL 1.0 (EUBUCCO v0.2); cadastre data © Dirección General del Catastro
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 APIscoringLive
2026-10-15
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
Buildings the Álava cadastre records as ruined
Arabako Foru Aldundia — Diputación Foral de Álava, Catastro de Álava (INSPIRE Buildings WFS)
Open API54Live
2026-10-15
CC BY 4.0 (Arabako Foru Aldundia / Diputación Foral de Álava)
Buildings the Álava cadastre records as declined (300 m² or more)
Arabako Foru Aldundia — Diputación Foral de Álava, Catastro de Álava (INSPIRE Buildings WFS)
Open API260Live
2026-10-15
CC BY 4.0 (Arabako Foru Aldundia / Diputación Foral de Álava)
Office buildings of 1,000 m² or more (Álava cadastre use)
Arabako Foru Aldundia — Diputación Foral de Álava, Catastro de Álava (INSPIRE Buildings WFS)
Open API119Live
2026-10-15
CC BY 4.0 (Arabako Foru Aldundia / Diputación Foral de Álava)
Vacant plots in the City's urban land-use map (2022, 500 m² or more)
Ayuntamiento de Vitoria-Gasteiz — Centro de Estudios Ambientales, Mapa de usos del suelo urbano 2022
Open download462Live
2026-10-15
CC BY 4.0 (Ayuntamiento de Vitoria-Gasteiz)

What this radar cannot see yet

  • Vitoria-Gasteiz is in Álava, whose foral cadastre is separate from the Spanish Catastro: Catastro's bulk files and per-point floor areas do not cover it. The Álava cadastre's INSPIRE layer (condition, use, storeys, height) is used instead; no floor-area source reads it yet, so floor areas come from satellite heights.
  • The City's list of homes paying the 50% empty-home IBI surcharge (4,120 in 2026) is not published by address.
  • The City's census of about 1,000 empty ground-floor premises is not published as open data.
  • The Hacienda inventory of central-state property holds no unassigned State building or plot in the city (checked 15 Oct 2026).
  • The cadastre records 54 ruins (many rural outbuildings in the villages) and 260 larger declined buildings — condition, not vacancy.
  • No list of empty municipal or Basque Government buildings is published; the large empty public buildings shown come from the press.

Know an empty building we have missed?

Open data cannot see everything. Tell us about a building in Vitoria-Gasteiz 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 149 cities in the atlas

The figure on each card: empty buildings on record.

Alicante, Spain400empty buildings on recordAndorra la Vella, Andorra2empty buildings on recordBarcelona, Spain1,248empty buildings on recordBilbao, Spain19empty buildings on recordBordeaux, France171empty buildings on recordCórdoba, Spain299empty buildings on recordLas Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain181empty buildings on recordMadrid, Spain366empty buildings on recordMálaga, Spain1,932empty buildings on recordMurcia, Spain502empty buildings on recordNantes, France45empty buildings on recordPalma, Spain143empty buildings on recordSeville, Spain134empty buildings on recordToulouse, France74empty buildings on recordValencia, Spain842empty buildings on recordVigo, Spain232empty buildings on recordZaragoza, Spain286empty buildings on record