What decides whether you may mount a camera in a strata building — the prescribed by-laws, your building’s own additional by-laws, and the approval pack that works.
Almost every condominium argument about cameras starts with somebody citing the Strata Management Act. It is worth knowing, before you either quote it or have it quoted at you, that the Act has nothing to say on the subject.
That is a useful thing to know in both directions. A management office cannot point to a provision of the Act that bans your camera, because there is not one. And you cannot point to a provision that entitles you to one either. The answer lives somewhere else, and this page is about finding it.
One caution before you use that sentence in an email: it is about the Strata Management Act and its Regulations, and nothing more. It does not mean no Malaysian law touches cameras in a condominium — data-protection law is a separate question, dealt with further down this page and in our PDPA guide.
Read whose camera that is. The by-law is about the equipment installed on common property — the building’s own cameras in the lobby, the lift car and the car park — and it exists to stop residents interfering with them. It is not a rule about your camera, and quoting it as though it were will simply make you look as though you have not read it.
That sentence is the map for the rest of this page: the prescribed by-laws about the exterior of a parcel and about common property, and then whatever your own building has added on top. Those are two different documents and you need both. The first is the same in every strata scheme in the country. The second is specific to your block and is the one nobody has read.
Take the third one seriously, because it is the one that catches installations people assume are harmless. Drilling a bracket into a corridor wall, a lift-lobby ceiling or the outside face of your own front wall is fixing something into common property, and the wording above is unambiguous about what that requires first.
This matters because most Klang Valley buildings that residents describe as “the management” are a joint management body rather than a management corporation, and people sometimes assume the by-laws they read online apply only to the latter. On this point they do not differ. If you are unsure which body runs your building, our guides on strata renovation rules and the JMB and its first AGM explain the difference and the handover between them.
That single distinction resolves most of the cases we are asked about. Use it as a first filter before you spend anything.
| Where you want the camera | The question the by-laws above ask about it | What to do first |
|---|---|---|
| Inside the unit, looking out through your own window | Does anything get fixed to, or change the appearance of, the exterior or the common property? | Usually the least contentious option — but check your building’s own additional by-laws before assuming |
| On the inside face of your front door, looking at the doorway | Does mounting it involve drilling into anything outside the parcel? | Consider a fixing that does not penetrate common property, and ask the management in writing anyway |
| On the outside face of your front wall or beside your door | Is that surface part of the exterior of the parcel or part of the common property, and is it visible? | Ask the management, in writing, before drilling — this is the case most disputes start from |
| Bracketed to the corridor wall or lift-lobby ceiling | Is this fixing a bracket into common property? | Written approval first, without exception |
| On the balcony parapet or pointing out from the balcony | Does it change or affect the appearance of the building facade? | Written approval first — balconies are named in the definition quoted above |
| Landed home in a gated scheme with strata title | The same questions, applied to whatever is common property in your scheme | Get the scheme plan and the by-laws; gated schemes vary far more than blocks do |
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💬 Get Your Instant QuoteThis is the document that decides most cases, and it is the one almost nobody asks for.
So the honest answer to “is there a rule about cameras in my building?” is: there may well be, and it will not be in the Act. Ask the management office, in writing, for a copy of the building’s additional by-laws and of any house rules on installations. Do that before you buy hardware, not after a notice appears on your door.
Two things follow for a resident. First, if you are told “the committee decided”, it is reasonable to ask which general meeting passed the additional by-law and to ask for the minutes — the threshold and the notice period are in the wording above. Second, if you sit on the committee and want a workable rule rather than a running argument, that is the route the Act gives you, and a rule agreed in advance is far easier to enforce than an objection raised after twenty units have already drilled a bracket.
A sensible additional by-law on cameras usually settles four things: where a camera may and may not be fixed, what has to be submitted before installation, what the building expects about cabling and appearance, and who to contact when a resident objects. Our guide to changing or challenging a JMB covers the meeting machinery.
Management offices refuse vague requests and approve specific ones, because a specific request is one they can attach conditions to. Submit the whole thing at once.
| What to submit | Why the management wants it | Practical tip |
|---|---|---|
| A photograph of the exact mounting position, marked | It tells them immediately whether common property is involved | Take it from where a passer-by would stand, not from inside your unit |
| The camera model and its physical size and colour | Appearance is what most facade by-laws are actually about | Offer the least visually intrusive option you can live with |
| The cable route, and how it will be concealed or trunked | Trailing cable in a corridor is the thing they will refuse | Say where the cable enters your parcel and how the penetration will be sealed and made good |
| How it is fixed, and whether anything penetrates common property | This is the fixings question in the by-law quoted above | If a non-penetrating fixing is possible, say so explicitly — it removes their main objection |
| The field of view, described honestly | Neighbour complaints are the management’s problem, so they will ask | Angle it at your own doorway and say so; offer to mask the rest if the system supports it |
| Who is installing it and when | Contractor access, working hours and lift bookings are their standing concerns | Attach the contractor’s details and ask what their access process requires |
| An undertaking to make good on removal | It answers “what if you move out” before they ask it | One sentence, in writing, resolves more applications than any argument |
Send it by email so there is a dated record, ask for the approval in writing, and keep it. An approval that exists only as a conversation with a manager who has since left is not much use two years later.
The second question after “may I put one up” is always about privacy — either the neighbour’s, or yours when their camera is the one pointing at your door. Here is what we can tell you, and it is less than most pages on this subject claim.
That is a genuinely uncomfortable answer for the person being filmed, and it is the reason we would rather you read it here than discover it after spending months on the wrong complaint. If a neighbour’s camera is aimed at your front door, the practical route is not a data-protection argument:
Residents ask us two things about the management’s cameras: what governs them, and how to get footage after an incident. On the first, this guide deliberately does not answer whether the management body itself is bound by data-protection law when it runs the building’s cameras — that is a legal characterisation of your own management body’s position, and it belongs with its own legal advisers or with yours, not with a contractor’s web page.
What we can give you is the practical route. Requesting footage is a request to the management, and it goes better when it is specific:
Approval aside, a condominium is simply a harder place to install a camera than a landed house, and the constraints are worth knowing before you plan the system.
We publish no price for camera work, in a condominium or anywhere else, and the reason is specific to this page: in a strata building the cost is decided almost entirely by things a photograph cannot show — whether a cable can cross a wall at all, what the management will let you fix a bracket to, whether there is a spare circuit, and how far the recorder sits from the camera. A number quoted before those answers exist is a number that changes on the day of installation, which helps nobody.
For what the Klang Valley market charges for camera systems generally, and what moves the number, see our CCTV installation cost guide. For your own unit, send photos or a floor plan on WhatsApp and we will quote after a site survey.
ClickBina installs cameras, intercoms and door access in condominiums across Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, which means we spend as much time on management approvals as on brackets. We will tell you before we quote whether what you want is likely to need written approval, we will give you the photographs and the cable-route description your application needs, and we will work within your building’s access rules rather than arguing with the guardhouse. See our electrical and plumbing services, or send photos or a floor plan on WhatsApp and we will quote after a site survey.
This guide sets out what the wording we verified actually says, and what to do about it. It is information, not advice on your own situation. A specific situation — your building, your premises, your documents and your dates — needs a professional adviser who has read them, and you should take that advice before you rely on anything here.
Tell us what you need — we reply within the hour.