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Reuse radar

Málaga

Málaga is one of Spain's tightest housing markets: asking rents reached about €17 per m² a month in early 2026, 11% more than a year before, and every district but one is above the 30% rent-burden line. Few homes stand empty — about 8,800, 3.5% of the stock, by the City's own count — so the ways in are public land and long-stalled public buildings: the City has put 14 plots out on 75-year concessions for about 1,100 affordable rental homes, and keeps a register that can force owners of empty plots and ruins to build or sell.
An empty building in Málaga with homes, balconies and neighbours drawn onto it in ink
Empty buildings on record
1,932
from 8 open sources
Vacant office space
—
not yet measured
Homes potential
—
not in the economic model’s office data yet

Office figures: No broker publishes a current office vacancy rate for Málaga; the city's office stock is small and new-build, so offices are not where its empty floor space lies. Map built 2026-10-09.

Empty buildings in Málaga

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.

The City has no published list of its empty buildings and refused a transparency request for one in September 2025.

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

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

3 more buildings in Málaga 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.

  • antigua sede de la Seguridad Social de Capuchinos — reported for sale or to let · formerly administrative offices · owner: Seguridad SocialHeadline: the social security administration is trying a third time to auction its former Capuchinos office. Diario Sur (Málaga) (2024-10-06)
  • antigua sede de Porcelanosa — reported conversion planned · formerly retailHeadline: a ten-storey hotel and 16 subsidised homes will occupy the former Porcelanosa premises in Málaga. Tourinews (2026-05-22)
  • Locomotive shed at the railway station — reported for sale or to let · owner: AdifAdif’s 2020 hotel-use concession tender received no bids; the former shed remains without a planned use Diario Sur (Málaga) (2026-07-20)

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

Centro

The most homes empty in absolute terms and the most second and tourist homes, around a historic centre where the City's register of plots and ruins began.

  • 2,268 homes empty (4.6%) and 8,945 secondary homes (18%) in 2021
  • About 105 register files opened in the historic centre in 2014–2019, 37 closed after owners complied

Risk: Tourist demand sets prices; the City is only now designing a moratorium on tourist flats.

2 sources

Cruz de Humilladero

The City's largest empty building, the former provincial prison, sits in a dense working-class district.

  • About 14,500 m² built, in City hands since 2012, unused in 2022
  • 1,236 homes empty (3.3%) in 2021

Risk: The City has earmarked it for culture; housing would need a change of plan.

2 sources

Trinidad and El Perchel

The empty Convento de la Trinidad and the State building on Calle Rivas Fernández sit in an old working-class quarter west of the river.

  • Convento de la Trinidad: rehabilitation approved April 2026, works not tendered
  • 647 m² of Patrimonio del Estado at Calle Rivas Fernández 8

Risk: The convent is planned as a regional cultural centre; the State building's use is not stated.

2 sources

Signals to watch

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

  1. 2026-07-07Astoria plot handed over after 16 years

    The City granted the Fundación Unicaja a 75-year concession over the empty Astoria-Victoria cinema plot (1,299 m², 6,340 m² buildable, valued at €17.6 million) by direct award.

    1 source
  2. 2026-06-22Rents up 11% in a year

    Asking rents averaged €17.0 per m² a month in the first quarter of 2026; every district except Málaga Este is above a 30% rent burden.

    1 source
  3. 2026-05-211,100 affordable rental homes on municipal plots

    Projects for the 14 municipal plots tendered on 75-year concessions were presented; homes are capped at 70 m², 60% for young people.

    1 source
1 earlier signal
  1. 2025-09-11
    City declines to list its empty buildings

    The planning office refused a transparency request for a list of empty or unused municipal premises and buildings, saying it would need re-elaboration across several systems.

    1 source

Sources, and what we cannot see

18 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 API2,291Live
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 download217 buildings sizedLive
2026-10-09
CC BY-NC 4.0 (heights); footprints from OpenStreetMap and Microsoft: ODbL
Official floor areas and uses: Catastro INSPIRE buildings
Dirección General del Catastro (Ministerio de Hacienda)
Fuente: Dirección General del Catastro. The official gross floor area (officialArea, grossFloorArea) and current use of the cadastral building a record sits in — everything built on that parcel.
Open download1,469 buildings sizedLive
2026-10-09
Catastro INSPIRE licence 1.0 (free use of transformed information, with attribution)
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 API196Live
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 download0Live
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 research3Live
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)
Central-state property held unassigned (Patrimonio del Estado)
Gobierno de España — Portal de la Transparencia, Ministerio de Hacienda inventory of state property (CIBI), exported 8 Oct 2026
Open API1Live
2026-10-09
No licence stated on the export — shown with credit to the Portal de la Transparencia (EHC decision, 6 Oct 2026)
Buildings the cadastre records as ruined
Dirección General del Catastro — INSPIRE Buildings (August 2026 release)
Open download131Live
2026-10-09
Catastro open data (attribution: Dirección General del Catastro)
Buildings the cadastre records as declined (300 m² or more)
Dirección General del Catastro — INSPIRE Buildings (August 2026 release)
Open download113Live
2026-10-09
Catastro open data (attribution: Dirección General del Catastro)
Heritage at risk in Málaga — Hispania Nostra's Lista Roja
Hispania Nostra — Lista Roja del Patrimonio
Open download3Live
2026-10-09
All rights reserved (Hispania Nostra, aviso legal): only the entry's name, the street, the date added and a link to its card are kept — no descriptions or photos; credited "Hispania Nostra — Lista Roja"
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 research9Live
2026-10-13
Facts with a link to the article; the one-line summary is ours — no article text is republished

What this radar cannot see yet

  • The City has no published list of its empty buildings and refused a transparency request for one in September 2025.
  • The register of plots and ruins (RMSER) is not published as a list.
  • Empty homes are counted by district only (8,831 in 2021, from water consumption); there is no address-level layer.
  • The open-data portal publishes base cartography without building use or condition; the Junta's property inventory has no coordinates.
  • The cadastre records 131 ruins and 116 declined buildings of 300 m² or more (August 2026 release) — condition, not vacancy.

Know an empty building we have missed?

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