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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
Empty buildings on record
196
and 7 more with an empty shop, flat or floor
Vacant office space
308,470 m²
6.6% of the stock
Homes potential
≈ 1,122
if 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 2026-10-09.

Empty buildings in Lisbon

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.

Lisbon publishes no building-level vacancy data: the city's list of 2,854 vacant private properties (for the property-tax surcharge) is not open. The empty-building layers here are OpenStreetMap and the Santa Casa's auction lists — buildings offered for rehabilitation, not a vacancy register.

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

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

8 more buildings in Lisbon reported in the news, not yet on the map

The articles do not give an address we could place, so these have no pin yet. From news reports, summed up in our own words with a link to each article — not checked on site by EHC.

  • Antigas Oficinas Gerais de Fardamento do Exército (OGFE) — reported conversion planned · formerly industrial building · about 54 rooms · owner: Exército PortuguêsDisused army uniform workshops near Santa Apolónia to be refurbished with recovery funds as temporary housing for soldiers. SAPO (2025-02-25)
  • Antigo asilo da Rua Bartolomeu da Costa, Rua Bartolomeu da Costa 2 — reported empty · owner: Fundação D. Pedro IVReported abandoned when the Okupar Abril group entered it Correio da Manhã (2024-11-01)
  • Antigos armazéns vinícolas Abel Pereira da Fonseca — reported convertedThe 22,000-square-metre vacant warehouses became 8 Marvila, a leisure, arts and culture quarter Idealista PT (news) (2024-12-06)
  • Edifício de escritórios da Ageas (projeto Panorama) — reported conversion planned · formerly office · 85 apartments · owner: AgeasInsurer-owned office block in Benfica to be converted into 85 middle-market flats; licensing under way, works from late 2027. Jornal Económico (2026-10-04)
  • edifício desabitado da Santa Casa da Misericórdia em Campo de Ourique — reported empty · formerly residential building · owner: Santa Casa da MisericórdiaSteel beams are holding up the façade of an uninhabited Santa Casa da Misericórdia building in Campo de Ourique. Correio da Manhã (2026-05-07)
  • Edifícios Avenida 24 de Julho 134-140 / Avenida Infante Santo 2, Avenida de 24 de Julho 134-140 — reported for sale or to let · formerly administrative offices · owner: Estado PortuguêsOne of the state properties the Government resolved in October 2025 to put up for sale, with proceeds earmarked for housing policy. Observador (2025-10-23)
  • Palácio da Baronesa — reported conversion under wayA bank is leading green finance for the conversion of the Baroness's Palace in Lisbon. Jornal PT50 (2025-09-08)
  • prédio devoluto na Rua Cor de Rosa, Rua Cor de Rosa — reported emptyFirefighters brought under control a blaze in an empty building on Rua Cor de Rosa. Correio da Manhã (2026-10-02)

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. 308,470 m² of offices stand empty (6.6% of the stock).

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
  • Four Santa Casa buildings to rehabilitate offered in Arroios in 2025–26 (Cruz da Carreira, Capitão Renato Baptista, Açores, Almirante Reis/Anjos)

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

3 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

Baixa and Santa Maria Maior

The historic centre has the second-highest number of privately owned empty buildings and is covered by a safeguard plan.

  • 269 private vacant properties in Santa Maria Maior (end of 2023)
  • Baixa Pombalina safeguard plan in force since 2011
  • Santa Casa auction lots on Rua de São Mamede (boarded up), Rua dos Sapateiros and Calçada do Menino de Deus (2025–26)

Risk: Tourism uses compete for every building; prices are the highest in the city.

3 sources

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

Signals to watch

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

  1. 2026-07-09Santa Casa auction: 6 of 8 lots sold

    The Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa sold six of eight properties for €15.0 million; the lots included small buildings to rehabilitate in the Baixa and Santo António and an 11-storey office block on Avenida José Malhoa. It did not say which two drew no bids.

    2 sources
  2. 2026-07-06City proposes to auction ten municipal plots

    The City proposed selling ten municipal plots and buildings it calls unnecessary (Rua Pardal Monteiro, Rua Emília Eduarda, Rua de Campolide, Rua Washington, Quinta dos Alcoutins and others) for a base of €59.2 million; eight need the Municipal Assembly's approval.

    1 source
  3. 2026-07Office vacancy at 6.6%

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

    1 source
5 earlier signals
  1. 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
  2. 2026-02-04
    Santa Casa auction: 8 of 12 lots sold

    Eight of twelve Santa Casa properties sold for €7.0 million and four drew no bids; four of the twelve, three of them small buildings in Graça and Mouraria, had already failed to sell in November 2025.

    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 what we cannot see

22 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 API212Live
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 download18 buildings sizedLive
2026-10-09
CC BY-NC 4.0 (heights); footprints from OpenStreetMap and Microsoft: ODbL
Building heights: Câmara Municipal de Lisboa (Temas de base)
Câmara Municipal de Lisboa
Câmara Municipal de Lisboa — Temas de base, layer L10CP_EDIF_ALT_3D (ALTURA_FINAL: height above ground from the city’s 1:1000 elevation points; storeys × 3 m where no roof level was measured).
Asking for permission166 buildings sizedLive
2026-10-09
Reproduction free; reuse subject to the council’s authorisation (requested)
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 permission0Pending
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 download0Live
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 API73Live
2026-10-09
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 download250Live
2026-10-09
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
2026-10-09
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
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 research20Live
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 APIscoringLive
2026-10-09
ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors)
Detailed plans (Planos de Pormenor) in force or in preparation
Câmara Municipal de Lisboa — geodados (Planeamento)
Open API32Live
2026-10-09
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
2026-10-09
CC0 (CM Lisboa geodata; cartography not certified for legal use)
Whole buildings the Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa put up for auction to be rehabilitated (2024–2026)
Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa — public auctions (hastas públicas) of non-strategic property, notices 1/2024 to 1/2026
Open download19Live
2026-10-09
No licence stated on the notices — shown with credit to the Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa (EHC decision, 6 Oct 2026)
Building plots the Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa put up for auction (2024–2026)
Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa — public auctions (hastas públicas) of non-strategic property, notices 1/2024 to 1/2026
Open download2Live
2026-10-09
No licence stated on the notices — shown with credit to the Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa (EHC decision, 6 Oct 2026)
State buildings in Lisbon ordered sold by the Council of Ministers (RCM 159/2025, annex)
Governo de Portugal (Presidência do Conselho de Ministros); sales run by ESTAMO S.A.
Open download4Live
2026-10-09
Diário da República, public official text; no licence stated — credited to the publisher
State property in Lisbon listed as unused — inactive, vacant or abandoned (Despacho 3260/2022)
Governo de Portugal — Secretários de Estado do Tesouro e da Descentralização e da Administração Local (list compiled by DGTF under Decreto-Lei 106/2018)
Open download2Live
2026-10-09
Diário da República, public official text; no licence stated — credited to the publisher
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 research27Live
2026-10-14
Facts with a link to the article; the one-line summary is ours — no article text is republished
Era of the buildings around it: INE census 2021 (BGRI subsections)
Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE)
Classic buildings by period of construction in the record’s census subsection (about a block) — not the building itself. Periods are broad (1946–80 is one).
Open downloadscoringLive
2026-10-14
Free reuse crediting INE
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
2026-10-14
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

What this radar cannot see yet

  • Lisbon publishes no building-level vacancy data: the city's list of 2,854 vacant private properties (for the property-tax surcharge) is not open. The empty-building layers here are OpenStreetMap and the Santa Casa's auction lists — buildings offered for rehabilitation, not a vacancy register.
  • There is no open list or map of municipal property; the City's property-management services (WS_Patrimonio and others) and the State property portal's map of unused public buildings (Programa Descentralização, portalimobiliariopublico.gov.pt) answer only with an access token, 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, and the 2022 list of 717 idle state properties (Despacho 3260/2022, three in Lisbon) sits in the official gazette's script-only site; neither is on the map.
  • The Santa Casa does not say which lots sold, so a building from its auction lists may already have a private buyer; the City's own ten-plot sale (2026) is known only from the press, without plot boundaries.
  • 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.

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 recordBilbao, Spain19empty buildings on recordCórdoba, Spain299empty buildings on recordMadrid, Spain366empty buildings on recordMálaga, Spain1,932empty buildings on recordMurcia, Spain502empty buildings on recordPorto, Portugal422empty buildings on recordSeville, Spain134empty buildings on recordValencia, Spain842empty buildings on recordVigo, Spain232empty buildings on recordVitoria-Gasteiz, Spain62empty buildings on recordZaragoza, Spain286empty buildings on record