Skip to content
Reuse radar

Leipzig

Leipzig's asking rents have risen by about 70% since 2015 and its office vacancy is climbing again, yet well over 100 residential buildings stand empty because their owners cannot or will not renovate (the City has contacted the owners of 28 of them). No list is published, so this radar starts from open maps, court auctions and named cases — and from the City's land, which it lets only on long leases to the best concept.
Vacant office space249,000 m²6.1% of the stock stands empty
Empty buildings on record342and 5 more with an empty shop, flat or floor; of all 347, 10 confirmed
On the map2,015buildings and sites from 10 open sources
Homes potential—not in the economic model’s office data yet

Office figures: BNP Paribas Real Estate, end of June 2026 — 249,000 m² of offices vacant, 6.1% (4.9% a year earlier); take-up in H1 2026 about 33,000 m², only about 39,000 m² under construction and 82% of it pre-let. Map built 2026-10-09.

Leipzig city profileReuse atlas: all of Europe

A tour in 3D

3 empty buildings in Leipzig, and what they could become

Buildings checked against today's sources and found empty — sites that could be well suited to the EHC model. A short film: how each one 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 ≈ 164 homes — a potential, not a plan.

  1. Former Kaufhaus Held (Lindenau)6,550 m² · ≈ 57 homes
  2. Einertstraße 3Einertstraße 3, 04315 Leipzig (Neustadt-Neuschönefeld) · ≈ 15 homes
  3. Breisgaustraße 67–73, GrünauBreisgaustraße 67–73, 04209 Leipzig (Grünau-Mitte) · ≈ 92 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.

The City's housing office works through a list of long-empty residential buildings (165 counted in a 2025 council answer) but does not publish it; only buildings named in council papers or the press are on the map.

Loading map…

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

Check any building in Leipzig: 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
78Breisgaustraße 67–73, GrünauConfirmed empty by EHCOnly as a partner
Distressed or stranded (named) · 11 storeys
9,864 m²12.7 m353 mA fit only

Homes standing empty

Of 2 Leerstandsmelder reports on the map, 2 sit in a building we can identify — 1 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
43Oststraße 49
Apartment building · 5 storeys · Extent not stated
1,284 m²Jan 2021
43Einertstraße 3, 04315 Leipzig (Neustadt-Neuschönefeld)Named by the SenateConfirmed empty by EHC
Apartment building · 4 storeys · Extent not stated
1,728 m²—

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

Lindenau, Leutzsch and Neulindenau (west)

Gründerzeit streets along the Lützner Straße where the City itself names empty, uninhabitable houses and a refurbished department store has stood empty for years.

  • Lützner Straße 99 named empty and not habitable by the City (2025)
  • Former Kaufhaus Held empty for many years
  • 28 OSM-tagged disused or abandoned buildings in Leutzsch and Neulindenau

Risk: Most empty houses are privately owned single buildings; the City has so far not used repair or modernisation orders against owners.

3 sources

Plagwitz and Kleinzschocher (south-west)

Former industrial district on the Karl-Heine-Kanal with factory remnants and brownfields, including a creative-scene building whose owner is in insolvency.

  • 16 OSM-tagged disused buildings in Plagwitz, 7 brownfields in Kleinzschocher
  • Markranstädter Straße 4 owned by a Gröner Group subsidiary, insolvency opened May 2025

Risk: The most-wanted creative quarter: land values and developer interest are high.

2 sources

Leipziger Osten (Volkmarsdorf, Anger-Crottendorf, Neustadt-Neuschönefeld)

The densest cluster of mapped disused buildings and brownfields in the inner east, with empty houses the City only learnt of in 2025.

  • 31 OSM-tagged disused buildings in Volkmarsdorf and Anger-Crottendorf
  • 16 OSM brownfields in Anger-Crottendorf and Neustadt-Neuschönefeld
  • Julius-Krause-Straße 8 named empty by the City (2025)

Risk: Fragmented private ownership; small plots.

2 sources

Eutritzsch, Möckern and Wahren (north)

Former rail and industrial land: the 15 ha Freiladebahnhof still unbuilt, an industrial site at foreclosure auction, and the most OSM brownfields in the city.

  • Freiladebahnhof: development plan since 2023, no building by Feb 2026
  • Dortmunder Straße: 29,055 m² at foreclosure auction (2026)
  • 36 OSM brownfields in Möckern and Wahren

Risk: Large sites in developers' or creditors' hands; contamination and long planning.

3 sources

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

Amt für Wohnungsbau und Stadterneuerung — empty-house cases

The office contacted the owners of 28 neglected empty residential buildings and advised the 20 who answered on renovation or sale; several have sold. A co-op can offer itself as a buyer in these talks, and press for repair or modernisation orders (§ 177 BauGB) where owners refuse.

1 source

Signals to watch

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

  1. 2026-09-03
    Council debates an empty house whose owner cannot be found

    A motion on Einertstraße 3 asked for expropriation; the city answered that it has practically no legal handle on long-empty houses. In 2025 it had counted 165 in an answer to the council.

    1 source
  2. 2026-07-25
    Asking rents up about 70% since 2015

    Median asking rent 2025: €9.88/m² in existing homes, €13.95/m² at first letting (PISA market report).

    1 source
  3. 2026-06-30
    Office vacancy at 6.1%

    249,000 m² of offices empty, up 26% in a year; little new space under construction.

    1 source
  4. 2026-06-08
    Former Gröner site at auction

    29,055 m² industrial site at Dortmunder Straße 18 to be auctioned by the Amtsgericht Leipzig.

    1 source
  5. 2026-04-29
    Council rejects Konzeptverfahren reform

    Selling small plots instead of leasing them was voted down 29:37; Erbbaurecht remains the rule.

    1 source
  6. 2026-01-12
    150 empty co-operative flats in Grünau back on the agenda

    Green councillors moved that the mayor negotiate with the owner of Breisgaustraße 67–73, a mothballed eleven-storey block, to refit it for social housing.

    1 source
  7. 2026-01-10
    Population 633,592, growth slowing

    Up by only 1,030 in 2025, the smallest rise since 2002.

    1 source
  8. 2025-12-31
    City: repair orders cannot be enforced

    Answering a council question, the housing office said it tries incentives and advice instead, because a modernisation order leaves the city to pay the unprofitable costs and Saxon law gives it no right of entry to assess a building.

    1 source
  9. 2025-11-07
    City names empty houses after squats

    Answering the council after the October squats, the City described three empty, uninhabitable houses and said it had contacted the owners of 28 neglected empty residential buildings; LZ puts the number of empty houses at well over 100.

    1 source

Sources and freshness

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.

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 API1Live
2026-10-09
Official public notice (§ 39 ZVG)
OpenStreetMap disused/abandoned tags and brownfields
OpenStreetMap contributors
Open API522Live
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 download823 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 permission2Live
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 download2Live
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 API204Live
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 research9Live
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)
OpenStreetMap: office buildings
OpenStreetMap contributors
Open API696Live
2026-10-09
ODbL 1.0
OpenStreetMap: land mapped as brownfield
OpenStreetMap contributors
Open API185Live
2026-10-09
ODbL 1.0
Public-purpose and administration buildings in the cadastre (ALKIS)
Landesamt für Geobasisinformation Sachsen (GeoSN) — ALKIS NAS for Leipzig, read by scripts/reuse/import-leipzig-alkis.ts
Open download391Live
2026-10-09
dl-de/by-2-0 (© GeoSN)
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 information3Live
2026-10-09
No licence stated — official lists released under the IFG and published by FragDenStaat; used with credit to the BImA and FragDenStaat

What this radar cannot see yet

  • The City's housing office works through a list of long-empty residential buildings (165 counted in a 2025 council answer) but does not publish it; only buildings named in council papers or the press are on the map.
  • Saxony's cadastre has no 'unused' flag and no storeys for Leipzig: the full ALKIS file (edition 25 Sep 2026, 150,948 buildings) was read on 8 Oct 2026 and the condition field is empty everywhere. It gives 391 public and administration buildings instead.
  • Floor area: the City publishes its own LoD2 model (CityGML/Shapefile, dl-de/by-2-0) and GeoSN its LoD2 tiles; neither is read by the build yet (an adapter is needed), so heights come from the Global Building Atlas.
  • No open layer of City-owned buildings (the City reports 5,019 buildings and 545 ground leases only as totals); the City's 'wohnraumversorgung' map layer refuses access. Land values (2010–2026) are open but not yet used.

Know an empty building we have missed?

Open data cannot see everything. Tell us about a building in Leipzig 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.

Berlin, Germany1,875empty buildings on recordBielefeld, Germany101empty buildings on recordBochum, Germany155empty buildings on recordBonn, Germany141empty buildings on recordBremen, Germany205empty buildings on recordCologne, Germany374empty buildings on recordDortmund, Germany304empty buildings on recordDresden, Germany341empty buildings on recordDuisburg, Germany141empty buildings on recordDüsseldorf, Germany46empty buildings on recordEssen, Germany224empty buildings on recordFrankfurt am Main, Germany208empty buildings on recordHamburg, Germany524empty buildings on recordHannover, Germany197empty buildings on recordMannheim, Germany82empty buildings on recordMunich, Germany316empty buildings on recordNuremberg, Germany109empty buildings on recordPoznań, Poland307empty buildings on recordPrague, Czechia1,058empty buildings on recordStuttgart, Germany175empty buildings on recordSzczecin, Poland353empty buildings on recordWrocław, Poland676empty buildings on recordWuppertal, Germany224empty buildings on record