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Reuse radar

Vigo

In the 2021 census 15% of Vigo's homes were empty, and the Concello itself counts 12,897 empty homes, 89% of them owned by individuals. Rents reached €11.2/m² in December 2025, 9% more than a year earlier, and about 10,000 people are waiting for social housing. In the Casco Vello the Xunta–Concello consortium has rehabilitated 90 buildings into 130 homes, but stalled projects such as the Panificadora and the expropriations on Praza da Igrexa show how slowly ruined buildings change hands.
An empty building in Vigo with homes, balconies and neighbours drawn onto it in ink
Empty buildings on record
232
from 9 open sources
Vacant office space
—
not yet measured
Homes potential
—
not in the economic model’s office data yet

Office figures: We found no broker (CBRE, JLL, Colliers, Cushman & Wakefield, Savills) that publishes an office vacancy figure for Vigo; the clearest office-reuse case is Zona Franca's 2020 purchase of four inactive former Caixanova office buildings on an 8,500 m² plot in López Mora for €12.3 million, to become a business centre. Map built 2026-10-15.

Empty buildings in Vigo

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 Concello's own count of 12,897 empty homes is not published by address, and the city publishes no register of ruinous buildings or of plots under building orders.

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

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

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

Casco Vello and O Berbés

The old town is where the public bodies already buy, expropriate and rehabilitate small ruined buildings, so a co-op meets an established route and a known list of buildings.

  • Consorcio Casco Vello: 90 buildings rehabilitated, 130 homes; 2026–2030 plan of €15.1 million for 25 priority and 20 reserve buildings
  • 278 applicants for 4 consortium homes in October 2025
  • Panificadora area about 9,500 m², in expropriation since February 2025

Risk: Buildings are tiny and protected, expropriations are slow and are challenged in court, and finished homes have been sold at around €200,000–260,000.

3 sources

Beiramar–Coia–Bouzas waterfront

A row of empty canning, packaging and cold-store buildings along the shore where residents' groups already ask for housing and public uses inside the old halls.

  • Alfageme: announced sale for €20 million, about 240 homes planned, 119 former workers still unpaid
  • Fribesa: over 3,200 m², fires in 2011 and 2013, now back with the Port Authority
  • La Artística: four buildings left, only two protected in the PXOM draft

Risk: Owners are financial institutions, developers and the port; land is valued for 240-home schemes, and heritage rules make structures expensive to keep.

3 sources

City centre and Avenida de Madrid

Large public and bank-owned buildings stand empty in the centre while their owners argue over who should use them.

  • Old bus station closed since buses moved to the Urzáiz station, fenced by the Xunta in 2025
  • Xunta's €19 million associations centre frozen by a licence suspension upheld in March 2026
  • Urzáiz 22: 612 m², abandoned for years, shop closed since 2019

Risk: Most cases are locked in Xunta–Concello disputes or wait for the owner (Abanca) to act; any project needs both administrations to agree.

3 sources

Lavadores and Teis (east)

The big planned changes of use are here: the Álvarez works, the Xunta's Lavadores housing plan and the former ETEA navy school.

  • Álvarez PERI: up to 950 homes on more than 106,000 m², environmental approval 17 April 2026
  • Lavadores PIA cut from 2,000 to 1,450 homes, works expected in 2028
  • ETEA: €10.5 million agreement signed 25 February 2026, 24 years after the Navy left

Risk: These are new-build or public-facility schemes with long timelines (works from 2028); the reuse share is small (an office block, a chimney, some ETEA buildings).

3 sources

Signals to watch

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

  1. 2026-05-29Six evictions a week

    Alianza pola Vivenda counted almost six evictions a week in 2025 and the BNG says about 240 of the homes on offer for rent cost more than €1,000 a month.

    1 source
  2. 2026-05-12Municipal housing observatory starts work

    A €45,000 Concello–University of Vigo observatory will study the housing stock, empty homes and land; the Xunta's Lavadores plan was cut from 2,000 to 1,450 homes.

    1 source
  3. 2026-04-17Álvarez works cleared for 950 homes

    The Xunta gave conditional environmental approval to the PERI for the former Álvarez industrial complex (106,000 m²), keeping the office building and chimney as public facilities.

    1 source
2 earlier signals
  1. 2026-03-26
    Court upholds freeze on the old courthouse

    The Tribunal de Instancia de Vigo backed the Concello's suspension of the licence for the Xunta's €19 million associations centre in the former courts on Rúa Lalín while ownership is unresolved.

    1 source
  2. 2026-02-02
    Rents up 9% in a year

    Average rent reached €11.2/m² in December 2025; the Concello commissioned a study on asking the Xunta to declare Vigo a stressed housing market.

    1 source

Sources, and what we cannot see

22 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 API25Live
2026-10-15
ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors)
Rail, S-Bahn and U-Bahn stations (OpenStreetMap)
OpenStreetMap contributors
Open APIscoringLive
2026-10-15
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 download3 buildings sizedLive
2026-10-15
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 download29 buildings sizedLive
2026-10-15
Catastro INSPIRE licence 1.0 (free use of transformed information, with attribution)
Road noise (EU Environmental Noise Directive, Lden)
European Environment Agency
Open APIscoringLive
2026-10-15
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
2026-10-15
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
2026-10-15
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
2026-10-15
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 API145Live
2026-10-15
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
2026-10-15
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
2026-10-15
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
2026-10-15
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 research12Live
2026-10-15
Facts cited to their publishers
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 research0Live
2026-10-15
Facts with a link to the article; the one-line summary is ours — no article text is republished
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
2026-10-15
ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors)
Year built: Spanish cadastre (via EUBUCCO)
Dirección General del Catastro, via EUBUCCO v0.2 (Milojevic-Dupont et al.)
The cadastre’s construction year of the building a record sits in (or the nearest within 5 m), as EUBUCCO took it from the Spanish cadastre’s INSPIRE buildings. A cadastral building is everything on one parcel; its year can be that of a major refurbishment. Not the Basque Country or Navarre, which keep their own cadastres.
Open downloadscoringLive
2026-10-15
ODbL 1.0 (EUBUCCO v0.2); cadastre data © Dirección General del Catastro
Probable era: estimated from a street photo (Panoramax, Mapillary, Google Street View)
Panoramax and Mapillary contributors; Google Street View (research use agreed with Google, 14 Oct 2026); estimate by EHC with a vision model
Where no register dates a building: its era read from a Panoramax or Mapillary photo looking at it — Google Street View only where no open photo answers (scripts/reuse/estimate-photo-eras.ts), only when the building is clearly visible and the model is confident, and only as “before 1945” or “1945 or later” — the split it got right for 89% of buildings with a register year in Amsterdam and Paris, and 89% from Street View pictures alone (photo-eras/calibration.json). An estimate: a sentence in the conversion check, never points.
Open APIscoringLive
2026-10-15
Open photos CC BY-SA 4.0 or Licence Ouverte 2.0 (per picture); Street View read for research only, never stored or shown; only the estimated era is published, never a photo
Buildings the cadastre records as ruined
Dirección General del Catastro — INSPIRE Buildings (August 2026 release; Vigo is filed under the Gerencia de Vigo, territory code 54)
Open download204Live
2026-10-15
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; Vigo is filed under the Gerencia de Vigo, territory code 54)
Open download127Live
2026-10-15
Catastro open data (attribution: Dirección General del Catastro)
Office buildings of 1,000 m² or more (cadastre main use "office")
Dirección General del Catastro — INSPIRE Buildings (August 2026 release; Vigo is filed under the Gerencia de Vigo, territory code 54)
Open download140Live
2026-10-15
Catastro open data (attribution: Dirección General del Catastro)
Central-state buildings held unassigned (Patrimonio del Estado)
Gobierno de España — Portal de la Transparencia, Ministerio de Hacienda inventory of state property (CIBI), exported 15 Oct 2026
Open API1Live
2026-10-15
No licence stated on the export — shown with credit to the Portal de la Transparencia (EHC decision, 6 Oct 2026)
Central-state plots held unassigned (Patrimonio del Estado)
Gobierno de España — Portal de la Transparencia, Ministerio de Hacienda inventory of state property (CIBI), exported 15 Oct 2026
Open API3Live
2026-10-15
No licence stated on the export — shown with credit to the Portal de la Transparencia (EHC decision, 6 Oct 2026)
Brownfield land (OpenStreetMap)
OpenStreetMap contributors
Open API3Live
2026-10-15
ODbL 1.0

What this radar cannot see yet

  • The Concello's own count of 12,897 empty homes is not published by address, and the city publishes no register of ruinous buildings or of plots under building orders.
  • The Concello's open-data catalogue (datos.vigo.org, about 140 datasets) holds facilities, tourism and transport, but no municipal property, vacancy or planning layer.
  • The cadastre records 204 ruins (77 with no use recorded, many small outbuildings) and 127 larger declined buildings — condition, not vacancy.
  • Port of Vigo and Zona Franca property, and the Xunta's buildings, are not published as open inventories; the public buildings shown come from the press.
  • The central-state inventory holds one unassigned building and three plots in Vigo; the plots carry only a street name, so their points sit on the street.

Know an empty building we have missed?

Open data cannot see everything. Tell us about a building in Vigo 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 149 cities in the atlas

The figure on each card: empty buildings on record.

Alicante, Spain400empty buildings on recordBarcelona, Spain1,248empty buildings on recordBilbao, Spain19empty buildings on recordBordeaux, France171empty buildings on recordCórdoba, Spain299empty buildings on recordLas Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain181empty buildings on recordLisbon, Portugal196empty buildings on recordMadrid, Spain366empty buildings on recordMálaga, Spain1,932empty buildings on recordMurcia, Spain502empty buildings on recordNantes, France45empty buildings on recordPalma, Spain143empty buildings on recordPorto, Portugal422empty buildings on recordSeville, Spain134empty buildings on recordValencia, Spain842empty buildings on recordVitoria-Gasteiz, Spain62empty buildings on recordZaragoza, Spain286empty buildings on record