Office figures: Newsec, Q1 2026: 1,113,650 m² of offices in Tallinn; 7.3% of A-class and slightly over 10% of B-class space empty; no new deliveries in the quarter, 167,000 m² under construction (no single overall rate published on the page). Map built 2026-10-09.
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 says which buildings are empty: the building register records lawful use and whether a building exists, not occupancy, and Estonia has no vacancy tax.
0 empty buildings · colour = type, dark ring = confirmed
Check any building in Tallinn: could it become homes, and could the EHC model work there?
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.
| Priority | Building | Floor area | Depth | Station | Conversion check | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 59 | Near Madara 14 Distressed or stranded (named) · Vare · 1 other source nearby | 1,878 m² | 12.4 m | 900 m | A fit only | |
| 57 | Suur-Sõjamäe tn 11a On public land · Tootmismaa · 1 other source nearby | — | 12.3 m | 457 m | — | |
| 56 | Liinivahe 17 Distressed or stranded (named) · Vare · 3 storeys · 1 other source nearby | 2,354 m² | 14.9 m | — | A works up to €250–500/m² | |
| 55 | Tondi 53 Distressed or stranded (named) · Vare · 1 other source nearby | 10,700 m² | 21.7 m | 632 m | B fit only | |
| 53 | Former Liivalaia courthouse Public building named vacant | 6,483 m² | — | 1,107 m | — | |
| 51 | Tallinn Linnahall Public building named vacant | 37,221 m² | — | 1,224 m | — | |
| 50 | Tulika 7 Distressed or stranded (named) · Vare · 1 other source nearby | 2,026 m² | 17.5 m | 930 m | A fit only | |
| 48 | Near Astangu Distressed or stranded (named) · Vare · 1 other source nearby | 1,620 m² | 10.7 m | 2,821 m | A fit only | |
| 48 | Filtri tee 10 On public land · Elamumaa-100% -% -% · 1 other source nearby | — | 12.7 m | 1,537 m | — | |
| 46 | Near Paldiski mnt 52 Distressed or stranded (named) · Vare · 1 other source nearby | 2,408 m² | 19.1 m | 1,702 m | A fit only |
Where empty offices, the right zoning and a working neighbourhood come together — and what could go wrong.
Holds half the city's large office buildings and most of the named empty public buildings: the Liivalaia courthouse, Linnahall, Narva mnt 8 and Sakala 14.
Risk: Heritage protection (Linnahall, Sakala 14) and auctions to the highest bidder put prices beyond a co-operative's reach.
The old shipyard and harbour peninsula has the most mapped ruins in the city, and the State plans to sell harbour land on Süsta street and Vesilennuki 14 in 2026.
Risk: Ruins are often industrial shells or fragments; harbour land is sold at market prices.
The second office cluster, and the most public land: the City Property Office keeps 97 plots here and the State owns large production parcels along Tooma street.
Risk: Much of the public land is zoned for production and lies between rail lines and industry.
Old wooden and stone houses in a sought-after quarter; the Municipal Police is pressing the owner of an unused house at Koidula 32 to make it safe.
Risk: Single buildings of a few hundred square metres, privately owned.
Who controls the space, and what a housing cooperative can actually do with them.
Sells, by auction, buildings the State no longer needs — the Liivalaia courthouse, the Süsta street harbour area and Vesilennuki 14 are in its 2026 plan. Two failed auctions at Liivalaia show where a co-operative could make an offer or ask for sale conditions it can meet; RKAS says not every empty state building is sold.
Sells city buildings with conditions attached — Sakala 14 must be kept and restored — and looks after about 290 city plots. A co-operative can ask for buildings to be sold or leased on conditions that favour lasting affordable homes.
The City said in 2025 it would not build homes itself but use an active land policy: developing city land with partners or granting building rights on agreed price terms, and trading extra height or density for affordable homes. A co-operative fits the partner role.
Auctions defence buildings it no longer needs, such as Narva mnt 8 in the centre; repeated failed auctions brought the starting price down from about €1 million to €700,000.
Orders owners of unused buildings that endanger passers-by to secure them, as at Koidula 32. An owner under such an order may be open to selling or to a partner who restores the house.
Decisions, auctions and closures that change what becomes available, and when.
Starting price €788,000; the buyer must keep and restore the wooden house the City once planned to demolish.
Former ministry offices on Tõnismägi, the national archives on Maneeži street and Mustamäe tee 33 were sold; €12 million of sales are planned for 2026, including the Liivalaia courthouse.
Mayor Peeter Raudsepp says renovating the listed, mostly abandoned hall is beyond taxpayers and proposes a new landmark in its place.
The second auction, at €4.14 million, ended on 24 November without a buyer; RKAS will review the sale conditions.
About 50,000 residents are affected by unaffordable housing; the City plans an active land policy with private partners rather than building itself.
The 2021 census counted 175,690 of 737,873 dwellings (24%) without permanent residents, up from 16% in 2011; no figure for Tallinn alone was published with it.
20 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.
| Source | Access | Records | Status | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenStreetMap disused/abandoned tags and brownfields OpenStreetMap contributors | Open API | 234 | Live 2026-10-09 | ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors) |
| Rail, S-Bahn and U-Bahn stations (OpenStreetMap) OpenStreetMap contributors | Open API | scoring | Live 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 download | 230 buildings sized | Live 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 API | scoring | Live 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 permission | 0 | Pending 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 download | 0 | Live 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 download | 0 | Live 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 API | 65 | Live 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 research | 0 | Live 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 research | 0 | Live 2026-10-09 | Cited publisher per point |
| Named buildings and sites from EHC research (each with its own source) European Housing Coop research | EHC research | 7 | Live 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 API | scoring | Live 2026-10-09 | ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors) |
| Buildings mapped as ruins in the Estonian Topographic Database (ETAK) Maa- ja Ruumiamet (Estonian Land and Spatial Development Board) | Open API | 76 | Live 2026-10-09 | Maa- ja Ruumiameti avaandmete litsents (1 Jan 2025): free reuse with attribution |
| Office buildings of 1,000 m² or more in the building register (EHR) Maa- ja Ruumiamet — ETAK buildings joined to the building register (EHR) | Open API | 638 | Live 2026-10-09 | Maa- ja Ruumiameti avaandmete litsents (1 Jan 2025): free reuse with attribution |
| Industrial and warehouse buildings of 3+ storeys and 1,000 m² or more (EHR) Maa- ja Ruumiamet — ETAK buildings joined to the building register (EHR) | Open API | 167 | Live 2026-10-09 | Maa- ja Ruumiameti avaandmete litsents (1 Jan 2025): free reuse with attribution |
| State-owned parcels of 1,000 m² or more for building uses (cadastre) Maa- ja Ruumiamet — cadastre (katastriüksused omandivormiga) | Open API | 169 | Live 2026-10-09 | Maa- ja Ruumiameti avaandmete litsents (1 Jan 2025): free reuse with attribution |
| Plots kept by the City Property Office (Linnavaraamet) Tallinna Linnavaraamet (Tallinn City Property Office) | Open API | 203 | Live 2026-10-09 | No licence stated — shown with credit to Tallinna Linnavaraamet |
| City buildings registered as free (vaba) in the City's property register Tallinna Linnavaraamet (City Property Office) — the City's real-estate register (TKVR), buildings on the balance sheet of a City office | Open API | 10 | Live 2026-10-09 | No licence stated on gis.tallinn.ee — used with credit to Tallinna Linnavaraamet (EHC licence decision of 6 Oct 2026: unlicensed public layers shown with credit, removed on request) |
| City buildings being disposed of (võõrandamisel) Tallinna Linnavaraamet (City Property Office) — the City's real-estate register (TKVR), buildings on the balance sheet of a City office | Open API | 24 | Live 2026-10-09 | No licence stated on gis.tallinn.ee — used with credit to Tallinna Linnavaraamet (EHC licence decision of 6 Oct 2026: unlicensed public layers shown with credit, removed on request) |
| City buildings being declared unfit for use (kõlbmatuks tunnistamisel) Tallinna Linnavaraamet (City Property Office) — the City's real-estate register (TKVR), buildings on the balance sheet of a City office | Open API | 21 | Live 2026-10-09 | No licence stated on gis.tallinn.ee — used with credit to Tallinna Linnavaraamet (EHC licence decision of 6 Oct 2026: unlicensed public layers shown with credit, removed on request) |
| Riigi Kinnisvara AS: State buildings in Tallinn at public auction Riigi Kinnisvara AS (State real-estate company) | Open API | 5 | Live 2026-10-09 | not stated — credited to the publisher |
Open data cannot see everything. Tell us about a building in Tallinn that stands empty or barely used; once we have checked it, it joins the map under “Reported by visitors (checked)”.
The nearest radars. All 134 cities in the atlas
The figure on each card: empty buildings on record.