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Reuse radar

Timișoara

Timișoara has no register of empty buildings; its tool is a surtax on neglected historic buildings, decided building by building. In 2023 the City analysed 554 buildings, sent 167 summonses and surtaxed 111; for 2026 it surtaxes 47 more (11 at 300%, 33 at 400%, 3 at 500%). Offices are 11.3% empty (Q2 2026). The big empty buildings are the State's: a hospital shell begun in 1994 by the Ministry of Health, planned as an oncology institute, and a heritage brewery building with its roof fallen in.
Vacant office space33,200 m²11.3% of the stock stands empty
Empty buildings on record236 confirmed
On the map360buildings and sites from 5 open sources
Homes potential—not in the economic model’s office data yet

Office figures: iO Partners — vacancy 11.3% in Q2 2026 on about 293,700 m² of modern offices (vacant area = stock × rate); older stock not counted. Map built 2026-10-09.

Timișoara 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 buildings, no open list of the City's or the State's vacant premises; the City's open-data portal (CKAN) holds statistics only.

Loading map…

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

Check any building in Timișoara: 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
32Former brewery building on Strada Pestalozzi
Distressed or stranded (named)
21,837 m²51.5 m1,578 mC fit only

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

Historic protection zones of the old city

The surtax targets buildings in the historic protection zones, many of them whole houses on streets such as Memorandumului, Ștefan cel Mare and Gojdu.

  • 2026 list: 47 buildings in the historic zones (11 at 300%, 33 at 400%, 3 at 500%)
  • 2023: 554 buildings analysed, 167 summonses, 111 surtaxed
  • More than 400 buildings assessed in 2023–2024, about 250 surtaxed

Risk: Owners are numerous and the council's lists run to dozens of addresses a year; whole-building purchases are rare.

2 sources

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
Public owner

Ministry of Health — the hospital shell on Calea Torontalului

Begun in 1994, six storeys, guarded since; moved to the City in 2003 and back to the Ministry in 2011. The Ministry plans an oncology institute on its skeleton, so it is not on offer, but it shows how long State buildings can stay shells.

2 sources

Signals to watch

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

  1. 2026-09-28
    Offices 11.3% empty

    No new office project in the pipeline; one developer turns the office phase of a scheme into housing.

    1 source
  2. 2025-12-23
    47 buildings surtaxed from 2026

    Eleven at 300%, 33 at 400% and 3 at 500%, on top of the statutory increases.

    1 source
  3. 2025-03-03
    Former industrial complex approved

    The City approved the zoning plan for a mixed-use project on about 5 ha with five surviving 1904–05 buildings.

    1 source
  4. 2023-12-15
    111 buildings to be surtaxed

    Over 700 listed buildings checked in two years; 554 analysed in 2023.

    1 source
  5. 2022-10-23
    Hospital shell still guarded

    Six storeys, begun in 1994; a feasibility study says part must be demolished.

    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 API76Live
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 download215 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 API54Live
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 research6Live
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)
Neglected buildings on which Timișoara council raised the building tax by up to 500% (decisions of 2023–2026)
Timișoara council (council decisions), read from the Index normativ local (hcl.usr.ro)
Open download111Live
2026-10-09
Official council decisions (public acts, outside copyright under Law 8/1996 art. 9); the index states no licence — shown with credit to the council and hcl.usr.ro
Office buildings mapped on OpenStreetMap
OpenStreetMap contributors (via overpass.openstreetmap.fr)
Open API113Live
2026-10-09
ODbL 1.0

What this radar cannot see yet

  • No register of empty buildings, no open list of the City's or the State's vacant premises; the City's open-data portal (CKAN) holds statistics only.
  • The surtax decisions say a building is neglected, not empty; only 113 of 326 addresses could be placed because OpenStreetMap has few Timișoara house numbers.
  • The hospital shell on Calea Torontalului (km 5) is not placed on the map: no address or coordinates were found.
  • No seismic-class list for Timișoara was found.
  • No open cadastre of buildings (floor areas from the Global Building Atlas); aerial photos come from the 2017–2020 national orthophoto at 1.5 m resolution.

Know an empty building we have missed?

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

Belgrade, Serbia127empty buildings on recordBrașov, Romania14empty buildings on recordBucharest, Romania112empty buildings on recordBudapest, Hungary392empty buildings on recordCluj-Napoca, Romania34empty buildings on recordConstanța, Romania153empty buildings on recordIași, Romania11empty buildings on recordKošice, Slovakia34empty buildings on recordPodgorica, Montenegro9empty buildings on recordPristina, Kosovo10empty buildings on recordSarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina61empty buildings on recordSofia, Bulgaria342empty buildings on record