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Reuse radar

Lisbon

Lisbon counts about 2,850 privately owned empty or half-empty buildings for its vacancy tax, but publishes no map of them. The clearest routes in are public: a city programme that gives municipal plots to housing cooperatives on 90-year surface rights, a 48-hectare municipal valley planned for 2,400 affordable rental homes, and the state's sale of empty public buildings to fund housing.
An empty building in Lisbon with homes, balconies and neighbours drawn onto it in ink
Vacant office space308,470 m²6.6% of the stock stands empty
On the map274buildings and sites from 4 open sources
Homes potential≈ 1,122if 30% of empty offices converted

Office figures: Cushman & Wakefield MarketBeat, Q2 2026 — 308,470 m² available of 4,675,290 m² of offices in Greater Lisbon (6.6%), as published; the Western Corridor alone holds 131,110 m² (12.0%).. Homes: our economic model’s conversion engine. Map built 2026-10-06.

Lisbon city profileReuse atlas: all of Europe

The map

Switch layers on by the question you are asking. Every point comes from a public record, an open dataset or a cited report; open one to see where it comes from and what the data cannot tell us.

Lisbon publishes no building-level data on vacancy: the city's list of 2,854 vacant private properties (for the property-tax surcharge) is not open, so only OpenStreetMap shows empty buildings on this radar.

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0 points · click a cluster to zoom, a point for its sources

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.

ScoreBuildingFloor areaStationActions
58Former Inspeção-Geral do Ministério do Trabalho e da Solidariedade building
Public building named vacant
—331 m
53Quartel / Convento da Graça
Distressed or stranded (named)
15,000 m²102 m
51Former Presidency of the Council of Ministers headquarters
Public building named vacant
—860 m
35Cooperative site, Rua de Santa Engrácia / Rua da Bela Vista à GraçaPlans announced
On public land · 1 other source nearby
—663 m
31Former Manutenção Militar, north complex
Distressed or stranded (named)
—745 m

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

Colina de Santana and Arroios

A hill of historic hospitals, with the closed Miguel Bombarda already earmarked for affordable rent, in the parish with the most privately owned empty buildings.

  • Miguel Bombarda closed in 2011; 248 affordable rental flats proposed
  • Arroios has the most private vacant properties of any parish (290 at the end of 2023)
  • Colina de Santana urban project (about 124 ha) still in preparation

Risk: Classified buildings and an urban project still in preparation slow any conversion.

2 sources

Vale de Santo António

The largest piece of municipal land near the centre, planned almost entirely for affordable rental homes.

  • 48 ha, 94% municipal; 2,400 affordable rental homes planned
  • Plan amendment approved 21 January 2025; €672 million estimated

Risk: New building over 12 years; critics doubt the homes can stay at affordable rent without private partners.

1 source

Avenidas Novas office quarter

The state is selling office buildings here to fund housing, including one recorded as vacant; more state and ESTAMO properties are due at auction this year.

  • Vacant state office building at Rua Filipe Folque 44 sold at auction on 31 March 2026 (base €4.1 million)
  • Office building at Avenida Visconde de Valmor 72 sold the same day (base €13.0 million)

Risk: Buildings go to the highest bidder at auction, with a 15% deposit — hard for a young cooperative without a partner.

1 source

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
Allocation rule

Câmara Municipal de Lisboa — Programa Cooperativas 1.ª Habitação Lisboa

The city gives municipal plots to housing cooperatives on 90-year surface rights, after which the buildings revert to the city; the target is 500 homes by 2032 on 11 selected sites. The first site (Rua António do Couto, 18 homes) received four bids and a cooperative was selected in April 2025; tenders for the other sites follow as designs are finished.

1 source
Public owner

Fundo Nacional de Reabilitação do Edificado (FNRE)

The state fund takes vacant public buildings, such as the former Miguel Bombarda hospital, and turns them into affordable rental housing. Ask whether a cooperative or non-profit can manage a building once rehabilitated.

1 source
Private owner

Owners of buildings classed as vacant (devolutos)

The city identified 2,854 privately owned vacant properties at the end of 2023 — 1,158 fully empty — for its higher property tax on vacant buildings. Owners paying the surcharge are candidates to sell or lease whole buildings; the list itself is not public.

1 source
Subsidy

Government of Portugal — public housing acquisition programme

In September 2025 the government approved a programme to buy and rehabilitate up to 12,000 homes for public housing and a 'Partnerships for Rental' programme for affordable rent — possible finance for a cooperative that brings a building.

1 source

Signals to watch

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

  1. 2026-07
    Office vacancy at 6.6%

    Greater Lisbon take-up fell 20% in the first half of 2026; 204,430 m² are under construction.

    1 source
  2. 2026-03-31
    State sells two Lisbon office buildings

    ESTAMO's first 2026 auction sold the vacant state office building at Rua Filipe Folque 44 (€5.21 million) and an office building at Avenida Visconde de Valmor 72 (€15.73 million).

    1 source
  3. 2026-01-26
    Cooperative programme: no homes yet

    Two years in, €1.1 million spent on studies and designs; the first 18-home building in Lumiar has not started.

    1 source
  4. 2025-09-18
    Sale of 16 state properties to fund housing

    The Council of Ministers authorised ESTAMO to sell 16 state properties, with the proceeds going to public housing programmes, and approved a programme to buy and rehabilitate up to 12,000 homes.

    1 source
  5. 2025-01-21
    Vale de Santo António plan approved

    48 ha, 94% municipal land, 2,400 affordable rental homes planned over 12 years.

    1 source

Sources and freshness

6 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
OpenStreetMap disused/abandoned tags and brownfields
OpenStreetMap contributors
Open API212Live
2026-10-06
ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors)
Rail, S-Bahn and U-Bahn stations (OpenStreetMap)
OpenStreetMap contributors
Open APIscoringLive
2026-10-06
ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors)
Road noise (EU Environmental Noise Directive, Lden)
European Environment Agency
Open APIscoringLive
2026-10-06
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. From a one-time copy of 4 October 2026 — the API is not fetched, as it disallows automated agents.
Asking for permission0Pending
2026-10-06
Credited to Leerstandsmelder.de; asking for permission
Named buildings and sites from EHC research (each with its own source)
European Housing Coop research
EHC research17Live
2026-10-06
Facts cited to their publishers
Detailed plans (Planos de Pormenor) in force or in preparation
Câmara Municipal de Lisboa — geodados (Planeamento)
Open API32Live
2026-10-06
CC0 (CM Lisboa geodata; cartography not certified for legal use)
Urbanisation plans (Planos de Urbanização) in force or in preparation
Câmara Municipal de Lisboa — geodados (Planeamento)
Open API13Live
2026-10-06
CC0 (CM Lisboa geodata; cartography not certified for legal use)

What this radar cannot see yet

  • Lisbon publishes no building-level data on vacancy: the city's list of 2,854 vacant private properties (for the property-tax surcharge) is not open, so only OpenStreetMap shows empty buildings on this radar.
  • There is no open list or map of municipal property; the city's property-management map service exposes plans and urban projects only, and the detailed municipal GIS services require access tokens, so they were not used.
  • Portugal has no open building register with condition or use comparable to Spain's cadastre; the 2021 census reports empty dwellings only by statistical area.
  • The state's list of 16 properties for sale (Resolution 159/2025) is published auction by auction; only the first auction's list was available.
  • The national open-data portal (dados.gov.pt) returned a server error for robots.txt and was not crawled; idealista.pt news sits behind a bot wall and was not read.
  • Office vacancy is published only for Greater Lisbon, not for the municipality or by building.

Know an empty building we have missed?

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

Other radars

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