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Reuse radar

Kyiv

Kyiv publishes no current register of empty or long-unfinished buildings; the district administrations’ lists of 2016 are the last official count, and many property and cadastre registers are closed under martial law. What is open: the City’s list of vacant municipal premises for lease (374 premises in February 2024, the newest edition reachable from abroad), four municipal cinemas that stand unused, and a handful of Soviet-era shells documented by name. Offices are about 18% empty (Expandia, Q1 2026). War-damaged buildings, military and critical-infrastructure sites are left out by rule.
An empty building in Kyiv with homes, balconies and neighbours drawn onto it in ink
Empty buildings on record
254
and 33 more with an empty shop, flat or floor
Vacant office space
381,600 m²
18% of the stock
Homes potential
—
not in the economic model’s office data yet

Office figures: Expandia (CBRE in Ukraine and Moldova) — 18% vacancy on about 2.12 million m² of office stock, Q1 2026 (vacant area = stock × rate). Map built 2026-10-16.

Empty buildings in Kyiv

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.

No current official register of empty or long-unfinished buildings is published. The district administrations’ lists of 2016 (mapped by Texty; the source of OpenStreetMap’s source:abandoned=rda tags) are ten years old and mostly residential buildings declared unfit to live in.

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

Check any building in Kyiv: 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. 381,600 m² of offices stand empty (18% of the stock).

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

Upper town, Podil and the centre

The unfinished university block at Lvivska Square, the vacant floors of the Zhytniy Market in Podil (over 11,000 m² on the 2024 lease list) and the closed Kyiv and Kinopanorama cinemas sit within two kilometres of each other.

  • University block neglected for almost 51 years (Dec 2024)
  • Zhytniy Market: 11,188 m² vacant, needs major repair (Feb 2024)
  • Kinopanorama closed since October 2018

Risk: Heritage rules in the historic core, unresolved land questions, and a State or City owner who must run an open competition or auction for every building.

3 sources

Municipal cinemas across the city

Four of the City’s municipal cinemas — Kyiv, Kyivska Rus, Kioto and Zagreb — do not operate because their buildings are in poor condition, and the City’s cinema enterprise has no budget for repairs.

  • 4 municipal cinemas not working (Oct 2025)
  • 748,000 hryvnias for upkeep in 2025, no budget repair money
  • Zagreb (2,555 m²) on the 2024 lease list, needs major repair

Risk: Cinemas are cultural property the City wants to keep for culture; a reported move of budget institutions into three of them may have changed the picture since October 2025.

2 sources

Signals to watch

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

  1. 2026-08-28Kinopanorama petition fails

    A petition for the City to buy the closed central cinema, which is for sale, reached about 1,100 of the 6,000 votes needed.

    1 source
  2. 2026-05-19Office vacancy at 18%

    Expandia counts 18% vacancy on about 2.12 million m² of Kyiv office stock in Q1 2026, 0.5 points lower since January.

    1 source
  3. 2026-02-12Housing-policy law signed

    Non-profit social-housing operators, affordable-housing operators and non-privatisable affordable-rent funds become law.

    1 source
3 earlier signals
  1. 2025-10-31
    Four municipal cinemas unused

    Kyiv, Kyivska Rus, Kioto and Zagreb do not operate; no budget money for repairs in 2025.

    1 source
  2. 2024-12-04
    Public discussion asked for the university shell

    The rector of the Karpenko-Karyi University wants a broad discussion and an investor competition for the block neglected for almost 51 years.

    1 source
  3. 2024-02-27
    City lists 374 vacant premises for lease

    The last edition of the Department of Communal Property’s list on data.gov.ua: 374 premises at 268 addresses, 64 of them with 300 m² or more.

    1 source

Sources, and what we cannot see

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.

Every source, its licence and when we last read it
SourceAccessRecordsStatusLicence
OpenStreetMap disused/abandoned tags and brownfields
OpenStreetMap contributors
Open API243Live
2026-10-16
ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors)
Rail, S-Bahn and U-Bahn stations (OpenStreetMap)
OpenStreetMap contributors
Open APIscoringLive
2026-10-16
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 download387 buildings sizedLive
2026-10-16
CC BY-NC 4.0 (heights); footprints from OpenStreetMap and Microsoft: ODbL
Road noise (EU Environmental Noise Directive, Lden)
European Environment Agency
Open APIscoringLive
2026-10-16
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
2026-10-16
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
2026-10-16
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
2026-10-16
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 API0Live
2026-10-16
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 research0Live
2026-10-16
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
2026-10-16
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 research6Live
2026-10-16
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
2026-10-16
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
2026-10-16
ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors)
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
2026-10-16
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
Office buildings mapped on OpenStreetMap (government, security, defence, telecom and energy offices left out)
OpenStreetMap contributors (via overpass.openstreetmap.fr)
Open API1,090Live
2026-10-16
ODbL 1.0
Whole municipal buildings on the City’s 2024 list of vacant premises for lease
Department of Communal Property of Kyiv (Департамент комунальної власності м. Києва) — list of vacant premises that can be leased, report of 27 Feb 2024, on data.gov.ua
Open download7Live
2026-10-16
CC BY 4.0 (data.gov.ua dataset “Перелік об’єктів комунальної власності, які можуть бути передані в оренду”)
Vacant municipal premises of 300 m² or more inside larger buildings (City’s 2024 lease list)
Department of Communal Property of Kyiv (Департамент комунальної власності м. Києва) — list of vacant premises that can be leased, report of 27 Feb 2024, on data.gov.ua
Open download33Live
2026-10-16
CC BY 4.0 (data.gov.ua dataset “Перелік об’єктів комунальної власності, які можуть бути передані в оренду”)

What this radar cannot see yet

  • No current official register of empty or long-unfinished buildings is published. The district administrations’ lists of 2016 (mapped by Texty; the source of OpenStreetMap’s source:abandoned=rda tags) are ten years old and mostly residential buildings declared unfit to live in.
  • The City’s current property lists (data.kyivcity.gov.ua points to files on dkv.kyivcity.gov.ua) did not answer from outside Ukraine, and kyivcity.gov.ua serves a bot challenge, which is never worked around; the radar reads the 27 February 2024 lease list from data.gov.ua instead.
  • Property and cadastre registers are restricted under martial law: the public cadastral map and the land-cadastre services did not connect, and the register of property rights is open only to registrars and notaries.
  • Lease lots on Prozorro.Sale (358 current Kyiv lots on 16 Oct 2026) carry coordinates, but they are mostly single rooms and mix in defence enterprises, police and infrastructure holders, so they are not drawn.
  • Left out by rule (wartime): war-damaged buildings and strike sites, military, security and police property, and critical infrastructure — energy, heat, water, transport, telecoms and health care — whatever their condition or availability.
  • No open orthophoto service was found (the city’s ArcGIS server holds none; the State Geocadastre did not connect). Floor areas come from the Global Building Atlas only.

Know an empty building we have missed?

Open data cannot see everything. Tell us about a building in Kyiv 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 nearest radars. All 149 cities in the atlas

The figure on each card: empty buildings on record.

Brașov, Romania14empty buildings on recordBucharest, Romania120empty buildings on recordChișinău, Moldova112empty buildings on recordCluj-Napoca, Romania35empty buildings on recordConstanța, Romania157empty buildings on recordIași, Romania14empty buildings on recordKaunas, Lithuania68empty buildings on recordKošice, Slovakia43empty buildings on recordLublin, Poland205empty buildings on recordMinsk, Belarus70empty buildings on recordVilnius, Lithuania291empty buildings on recordWarsaw, Poland1,369empty buildings on record