Office figures: Malta publishes no open office-vacancy figure for Valletta that could be read: the National Statistics Office, the Planning Authority and the national spatial-data portal all answer automated requests with a bot challenge or HTTP 403. The radar lists 20 office, commercial and retail buildings from OpenStreetMap as the stock to look through. Homes: our economic model’s conversion engine. 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.
Malta has no public register of empty, derelict or dangerous buildings that could be read: the Planning Authority's map server and website (Cloudflare challenge), the spatial-data portal msdi.data.gov.mt (HTTP 403) and the National Statistics Office (HTTP 403) were not crossed; the census vacancy figures for Valletta would be in the NSO's census volumes, which could not be read.
0 empty buildings · colour = type, dark ring = confirmed
Check any building in Valletta: 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.
Where empty offices, the right zoning and a working neighbourhood come together — and what could go wrong.
The harbour-front warehouses and the old fish market are the State's own empty heritage buildings.
Risk: Already in concession or tender: the Pixkerija call asked for 65-year concessions and €18 million of investment.
Two lettable government premises on one plan, offered on lease with sealed tenders.
Risk: Small premises of unstated size; not a whole building.
The Evans Building, the city's largest disused public building in the news, sits on the way to Fort St Elmo.
Risk: The concession is settled in court; a co-operative would have to ask the Lands Authority and the government what remains open.
Who controls the space, and what a housing cooperative can actually do with them.
The Authority lists vacant government land and premises with plan references and a 'Show your interest' form, and takes sealed tenders for leases (tender documents €50). Ask for the premises in Valletta that have no tender open, and the area behind each plan reference.
For an owner of a residential property empty for over a year and built more than 20 years ago: a grant of up to €50,000 to rehabilitate it, in return for leasing it to the Housing Authority for 10 years, for sublet to households eligible for social accommodation. A co-operative that buys or holds such a dwelling could use it.
Large public buildings go out as 65-year concessions with a minimum investment (Pixkerija, €18 million; Evans, a €302,000 yearly fee) and a ground rent: a co-operative would need a social-use brief and financing to take part.
Decisions, auctions and closures that change what becomes available, and when.
The Court of Appeal overturned two review-board decisions of March and restored Valletta Luxury Projects as winner of the 65-year concession (€78 million bid).
Current terms and application forms for rehabilitating vacant dwellings (grant up to €50,000, ten-year lease to the Authority) were uploaded in February 2026.
Malta Strategic Partnership Projects opened a call, until 30 August 2023, for a 65-year concession over the old fish-market buildings.
A government-owned company applied to demolish a derelict Valletta building and rebuild it as three social-housing units (twelve residents); the article gives no address.
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.
| Source | Access | Records | Status | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenStreetMap disused/abandoned tags and brownfields OpenStreetMap contributors | Open API | 4 | 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 | 10 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 | 0 | 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 | 5 | 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) |
| Government premises held vacant and offered for lease or sale (Lands Authority) Lands Authority, Malta — Available Properties | Open download | 3 | Live 2026-10-09 | No licence stated — the Lands Authority's public property pages, used with credit to the Lands Authority; placed on their streets with Photon (OpenStreetMap, ODbL) |
| Office and commercial buildings (OpenStreetMap) OpenStreetMap contributors | Open API | 13 | Live 2026-10-09 | ODbL 1.0 |
Open data cannot see everything. Tell us about a building in Valletta 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.