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Reuse radar

Nicosia

This radar covers only the Republic-controlled municipality of Nicosia (the part south of the UN buffer zone; the Turkish Cypriot north is not shown). Cyprus has no open register of empty buildings: the nearest thing is the register of dangerous buildings kept by the Nicosia district authority (EOA) — 171 inside the municipality's boundaries, 161 in the old town, according to press figures of 2026 — which is published only through an interactive map that sits behind a CAPTCHA. The named empties are few: an eight-storey building unfinished for 14 years on Spyrou Kyprianou Avenue, the municipality's own Sopaz factory and student-housing purchases in the walled city, and 36 empty shops among 106 recorded on Makarios Avenue.
Vacant office spaceNot yet measured
Empty buildings on record1030 confirmed
On the map299buildings and sites from 5 open sources
Homes potential—not in the economic model’s office data yet

Office figures: No open office-vacancy figure for Nicosia was read. The radar lists 153 office and commercial buildings tagged in OpenStreetMap inside the Republic-controlled municipality as the stock to look through. Map built 2026-10-09.

Nicosia city profileReuse atlas: all of Europe

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.

No register of empty or derelict buildings is open. The register of dangerous buildings is an interactive map on ndlgo.org.cy, which answers automated requests with a CAPTCHA; not crossed.

Loading map…

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

Check any building in Nicosia: 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
13Unfinished eight-storey building, Spyrou Kyprianou Avenue
Stalled or insolvent project · 20 storeys
19,572 m²22.6 m—B no price works

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

Walled city (old town)

The densest concentration of dangerous and neglected buildings, and the target of the State's and the municipality's revival money.

  • 161 dangerous buildings in the old town (EOA, April 2026)
  • €3.44 million contract to restore the facades of 89 buildings on Ledra and Onasagorou streets (April 2026)
  • Target of 380 student rooms in the walled city by 2026

Risk: Dangerous-building cases, heritage rules and many co-owners per plot (10–20 on a central plot, some abroad) make deals slow.

4 sources

Makarios Avenue and the centre

A shopping spine with 36 vacant ground-floor premises of 106 recorded (16 of them on the rental market), and the unfinished eight-storey building on Spyrou Kyprianou Avenue.

  • 36 of 106 ground-floor premises vacant on Makarios Avenue (August 2026)
  • Unfinished building: first permit August 2011, still incomplete in March 2026

Risk: Shops and a stalled private build, not public buildings; the municipality's remedy is a proposed tax on idle shops.

2 sources

Sopaz and the Green Line edge

The municipality owns a landmark factory near the Green Line, and the Green Line revitalisation programme funds works nearby.

  • Sopaz factory bought for €2.1 million in 2019

Risk: The use of the Sopaz factory was still open when it was bought in 2019; its present state was not confirmed.

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
City agency

Nicosia District Local Government Organisation (EOA) — dangerous buildings

Since April 2025 the EOA, not the municipality, handles dangerous buildings: it declares them, gives owners three days to appoint an engineer, and intervenes where owners cannot pay. A co-operative can ask it which declared buildings in the municipality have willing sellers; the register is on an interactive map, not a download.

2 sources
Subsidy

Interior Ministry — Renovate–Rent scheme

Second call (open 16 March 2026 to 31 December 2027): up to €20,000, €30,000 or €40,000 per dwelling to renovate a home that has been vacant (electricity under 500 kWh a year for a year, permit before 2012) or to convert an office into a legal home, provided it is let for four years at 30% below the area's market rent. The first call had 63 applications, 38 approved.

2 sources
City agency

Municipality of Nicosia — walled-city revival

The municipality buys and restores buildings (student residences, social services) and a state scheme pays owners within the walls who convert buildings into student rooms; a €5 million housing scheme paid half of acquisition costs for buyers until the end of 2025. Ask the municipality which of its buildings are still unassigned.

2 sources

Signals to watch

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

  1. 2026-08-28
    711 buildings in the district officially dangerous

    The EOA released district figures; the district government asked the finance ministry for a special loan fund (a €2 million fund approved for the municipality was transferred to the district government).

    1 source
  2. 2026-07-31
    Digital registry of dangerous buildings

    The EOA launched an interactive registry: 712 buildings (657 dangerous, 55 needing repairs) in 72 areas, updated automatically.

    1 source
  3. 2026-04-21
    1,400 dangerous buildings, 161 in the old town

    The EOA manages 1,466 dangerous buildings in Nicosia; the figure for the old town is 161.

    1 source
  4. 2026-03-26
    Audit Office on the unfinished Spyrou Kyprianou building

    The Auditor-General reported 14 years of incomplete construction without consequences for the owners and asked for firmer law.

    1 source

Sources and freshness

13 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 API115Live
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 download135 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 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 API16Live
2026-10-09
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
2026-10-09
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 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)
Office and commercial buildings (OpenStreetMap)
OpenStreetMap contributors
Open API153Live
2026-10-09
ODbL 1.0
Brownfield land (OpenStreetMap)
OpenStreetMap contributors
Open API12Live
2026-10-09
ODbL 1.0

What this radar cannot see yet

  • No register of empty or derelict buildings is open. The register of dangerous buildings is an interactive map on ndlgo.org.cy, which answers automated requests with a CAPTCHA; not crossed.
  • The national open-data portal (data.gov.cy) could not be searched by API and no building or vacancy dataset was found by search; the Department of Lands and Surveys' town-planning services folder (DTPH) answers HTTP 403.
  • Press figures for dangerous buildings differ (656, 711, 712, 1,466) with definition and date; the municipality's own count is 171 (August 2026).
  • Only the Republic-controlled municipality is covered; the north of the city and the buffer zone are not.
  • Private empty buildings and upper floors are invisible here; owners in the old town often number 10–20 per plot.

Know an empty building we have missed?

Open data cannot see everything. Tell us about a building in Nicosia 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 134 cities in the atlas

The figure on each card: empty buildings on record.

Ankara, Türkiye102empty buildings on recordAthens, Greece128empty buildings on recordBrașov, Romania14empty buildings on recordBucharest, Romania112empty buildings on recordChișinău, Moldova111empty buildings on recordConstanța, Romania153empty buildings on recordPlovdiv, Bulgaria46empty buildings on recordPristina, Kosovo10empty buildings on recordSkopje, North Macedonia41empty buildings on recordSofia, Bulgaria342empty buildings on recordThessaloniki, Greece41empty buildings on recordVarna, Bulgaria56empty buildings on record