Which tribunal hears a new-build water leak claim, what its monetary limit is, who can bring one, and the three alternative dates the twelve-month filing window runs from.
Malaysia has two tribunals that come up in water-leak conversations, and they are constantly mixed up — including in print. They are different bodies, they hear different disputes, and they carry different monetary limits. Getting this wrong wastes the one thing a claimant cannot buy back, which is time.
| Your situation | Where the wording above points | The limit stated in that wording |
|---|---|---|
| A dispute with a licensed developer about a new home | The Tribunal for Homebuyer Claims | RM50,000 |
| A dispute with or within a JMB or management corporation about an existing strata scheme | The Strata Management Tribunal | RM250,000 |
| You are not sure which of those describes your situation | Neither, yet | Take advice on which body applies before you file — they are different bodies with different remits |
Send us a photo of the job on WhatsApp — we reply with an instant quote.
💬 Get Your Instant QuoteThis page is about the first row. The second row is covered by our Strata Management Tribunal guide, and the procedure for a leak between parcels is set out in inter-floor leakage.
That is the body most new-home owners mean when they say “the tribunal”. It is worth being precise about the name in your own correspondence, because a letter addressed to the wrong tribunal tells the recipient that nobody has checked which forum this belongs in.
What follows sets out the boundaries of what it hears, exactly as they were verified for this guide: who can bring a claim, what the claim has to arise from, the monetary limit, and the filing window. Check each one against your own documents in turn. If any of them does not fit, the answer is not to file anyway — it is to take advice on where the matter actually belongs.
Read those two sentences as a filter. Each element has to be present:
Two things follow, and people get them wrong in opposite directions. First, a later buyer is not automatically shut out: the wording expressly includes a person who has subsequently purchased that housing accommodation from the first purchaser. Second, the claim still has to arise from the statutory sale and purchase agreement with the developer — so a dispute with a renovation contractor about work you commissioned, or a dispute with a previous owner about something they did not disclose, is a different matter whatever the property is. For those, see a contractor who will not fix defects and buying a house with hidden defects.
Where your own situation sits against that filter is a question worth putting to a legal adviser before you file rather than after. It is a short question, and the documents that answer it are the ones already in your file.
The practical consequence of those two sentences together is that you have to know your number before you decide anything, and it has to be the whole number. Working out the remedial cost properly — itemised, from a contractor who has seen the defect — is not an administrative chore at the end of the process. It is what tells you whether one claim covers the matter or not. Note the direction of travel, though: which body applies is decided by who the dispute is with, as the wording at the top of this page sets out — not by the size of the number. The number tells you whether a matter fits inside the limit of the body that already applies to it.
It is also why an early, honest quote is more useful than an optimistic one. A quote that understates the remedial scope in order to look attractive is worse than useless here: it misprices the decision as well as the job.
This is the part most commonly stated wrongly in general write-ups, which tend to give a single start date. The wording above names three alternatives. Which one applies to a particular claim is not something we are going to assert — it depends on the matter and it is exactly what advice is for — but you cannot even ask the question until you have all three dates in front of you. So collect the documents that carry them.
| Document to obtain | Who normally holds it | Why you need it |
|---|---|---|
| The certificate of completion and compliance for your unit, and for the common facilities | The developer, the solicitor who acted on your purchase, or the management office | It carries the first of the three dates named in the wording above |
| Your sale and purchase agreement | The solicitor who acted on the purchase — they hold your file | It sets out the defect liability period whose expiry date is the second |
| Any notice or correspondence terminating that agreement | Your solicitor | The termination date is the third |
| Your vacant possession notice | Your solicitor or the developer | It fixes the date the defect liability period itself runs from — see water leaks inside the DLP |
| Your full defect notice thread, dated | You | It shows when each defect became apparent and what was reported |
That sentence is on this page for a specific reason. A general write-up that gives only a single start date can leave an owner with a genuine defect believing the window has closed when the wording does not say that. Read it, note that it warns against exactly that assumption, and then take advice on which of the three dates governs your own claim rather than deciding it yourself.
Because the second of those three dates is the expiry of a period, it is worth having the start of that period in front of you as well:
Practically, this is one more reason to keep the paperwork from handover onwards. Water damage checks at handover covers building the record on the day, and water leaks inside the defect liability period covers the notice-and-make-good sequence that runs before any of this becomes relevant. Resolving a matter at that stage, rather than at a tribunal, is the outcome to aim for.
The next paragraph is about the Strata Management Tribunal, not the homebuyer tribunal — the twelve-month window described above is a Tribunal for Homebuyer Claims rule and is unaffected by it.
Between that and the exclusions quoted further up, you have the outer edges of both bodies as they were verified for this guide. Anything beyond those edges is not a smaller version of the same question — it is a different forum, and finding that out at the filing counter is an expensive way to learn it.
Read that alongside the first section rather than instead of it. A water leak in a strata scheme can sit in either place depending on who the dispute is actually with: the developer of a new scheme, or the management and neighbouring owners of an existing one. Some owners find they have both a defect matter and a leakage matter running at once, which is precisely the situation in which advice is worth more than a guide.
For the strata side we have the Strata Management Tribunal, inter-floor leakage for the notice-and-inspection procedure, and common property defects for building-wide items.
Whatever route a matter ends up taking, the work in front of you is the same: turn a complaint into a number that somebody else can check. Do this before you make any decision about filing, because it changes the decision.
What any particular forum will or will not take into account is a question for advice. What is entirely within your control is having the number, itemised and evidenced, so that the conversation is about a figure somebody can check rather than about a grievance.
| What goes in the file | What makes it useful | Common gap |
|---|---|---|
| Purchase documents | The sale and purchase agreement, the vacant possession notice, the certificate documents | Held only by the solicitor and never requested |
| Dated photographs | Wide, context and close for every defect, on every occasion, exported out of the phone | Only close-ups, so nothing shows where the defect was |
| Defect notices | Numbered items, dates, proof of delivery, portal reference numbers | Verbal complaints at the management counter, with nothing in writing |
| The written finding of cause | What was tested, how, what was observed, what was ruled out | A one-line note saying “waterproofing failure” |
| Itemised quotes and invoices | Written against the stated cause, priced line by line | A single figure with no breakdown |
| Correspondence | The full thread, exported, in date order | Screenshots of fragments, with the middle missing |
| A chronology | One page: what happened, on what date, evidenced by which item | Never written, so nobody can follow the story |
The chronology is the item people skip and the item that changes how a file reads. One page, in date order, each line pointing at a document. Write it early and keep adding to it; reconstructing eighteen months of events from memory at the end is how detail gets lost.
Questions to ask a waterproofing contractor covers the vetting, what a waterproofing warranty is worth covers the paperwork at the end, and waterproofing scams covers the patterns that should end a conversation.
Every element above rests on one thing: a defensible statement of what actually failed. A file that says a ceiling is wet is a complaint. A file that says which pipe, which junction or which membrane failed, what was tested to establish it and what was ruled out, is evidence.
ClickBina leak detection and assessment is RM300 – RM800 per visit, and it is waived if you proceed with the repair — our own price, not a market range. These are the remedial routes it usually leads to, with market bands for context (market estimate 2026, indicative Klang Valley for the second table):
| ClickBina service | Our price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Leak detection & assessment | RM300 – RM800 per visit | waived if you proceed with the repair |
| PU injection — leaking bathroom ceiling | RM650 flat | one bathroom ceiling, includes the injection points |
| Bathroom re-waterproofing (non-hacking) | RM1,500 – RM3,500 per bathroom | existing tiles stay; coating over the screed |
| Bathroom re-waterproofing (hack & retile) | RM4,500 – RM9,000 per bathroom | tiles off, new membrane, retiled |
| Work | Market range (2026, Klang Valley) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| PU injection, market rate | RM80 – RM250 per point | priced per injection point, not per room |
| Cementitious slurry | RM6 – RM10 per sq ft | rigid; best on sound concrete |
| Flexible two-part membrane | RM8 – RM14 per sq ft | tolerates hairline movement |
| Liquid PU membrane | RM10 – RM18 per sq ft | seamless, the common flat-roof choice |
See water leak detection services for what the investigation involves, PU injection for a leaking ceiling and bathroom waterproofing for the two commonest remedial routes.
That sentence is the honest end of what a guide can do. We have set out what we verified: which body hears what, the two monetary limits kept deliberately side by side so nobody picks up the wrong one, the filter for who can bring a claim, and the three alternative dates the twelve months can run from. What we have not done, and will not do, is tell you which of those dates governs your matter, or what a tribunal would decide. Those depend on facts we have not seen.
What we can do is the part that comes first and that most files are missing: find the cause, state it in writing with photographs, and price the remedy line by line.
ClickBina repairs water leaks across Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, and a fair number of our jobs start as a dispute rather than as a repair. We do not give legal advice and we will tell you so. What we provide is the evidence layer — a detection visit at RM300 – RM800 per visit, waived if you proceed, a written finding of cause with photographs, and an itemised quote written against that cause rather than against a symptom. That is the document your adviser, your developer and your management office will all ask for first. See all of our waterproofing and leak repair services, or send us the photographs on WhatsApp for a fixed quote.
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 matter. A specific dispute turns on your own documents, your own dates and your own facts, and needs a professional adviser who has read them — take that advice before you rely on anything here.
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