What it costs to renovate a condo in KL and Selangor

Cost · Published 2026-07-14 · 6 min read

The number, and the number underneath it

Published 2026 guides converge on a range for a Klang Valley condo:

Those numbers cover the same ground as our general renovation cost guide, but a condo has a second cost structure sitting on top of the first one, and it has nothing to do with tiles or paint. It comes from living inside a building you share with other owners, one management corporation, and a set of rules you did not write.

Why strata living has its own arithmetic

A terrace house renovation answers to the local council for structural work and to nobody for anything cosmetic. A condo answers to the Joint Management Body or Management Corporation for almost everything, because the Strata Management Act 2013 puts renovation approval in their hands, not yours.

Written approval comes first, before a single tile is lifted. Most buildings want a floor plan, a scope of works, and proof that your contractor is registered and insured before they will issue a renovation permit. Skip this step and the risk is not a fine on paper. Contractors caught working without approval are commonly barred from the building entirely, which stops the project mid-way regardless of what you have already paid them.

A refundable deposit sits alongside the approval. Commonly RM1,000 to RM5,000, occasionally more in higher-end developments, held against damage to lifts, corridors, and common property. You get it back at the end if nothing is chipped, scratched or leaked. Budget it as cash that is temporarily unavailable, not as a line item you lose.

Working hours are shorter than you think. Most KL and Selangor condos restrict hacking, drilling and other noisy work to weekdays, commonly 9am to 5pm, with a narrower Saturday window and nothing on Sundays or public holidays. Some buildings go further, limiting hacking to a midday window on weekdays only. A five-day-a-week trade schedule on a landed house becomes a three-and-a-half-day week in a condo, and that stretches the timeline even when the crew size does not change.

Drilling near conduits and pipes is restricted outright. Work within roughly 300mm of concealed electrical conduits or water pipes is commonly prohibited by building rules, because a mis-drilled hole in a shared wall does not just cost you money. It can cut power or water to a neighbour.

Wet areas usually stay where the developer put them. Soil stacks, floor traps and drainage lines run vertically through the whole stack of units, so moving your kitchen sink or bathroom to a different wall is rarely as simple as it would be in a landed house. Local authorities such as DBKL and MBPJ also require their own permit for wet works, on top of building approval, when a toilet is relocated or a wall carrying plumbing is hacked. Waterproofing gets particular scrutiny for the same reason. A leak from your unit lands in your neighbour's ceiling, and buildings increasingly ask for a waterproofing certificate before signing off a bathroom.

What ambushes people who have only renovated a landed house before

• The service lift has a booking calendar. Large deliveries and skip removals need it reserved in advance, and it must be padded before use. Block the main passenger lift with bags of cement and the fastest way to lose your renovation permit is exactly that.
• Debris goes down, not out. Every bag of hacked tile and old cabinetry rides the service lift to the ground floor, which is slower and costs more than a lorry backing up to a terrace house gate.
• The timeline moves with the hours. A four-week landed job with a similar scope can run six in a condo, purely because the crew is only allowed on site for part of each day.
• A second permit can appear mid-project. If a wet area needs to shift, a local council permit joins the building's own approval, and that is a separate application with its own waiting time.
• The deposit is not the only deposit. Some buildings also require a worker registration fee or a lift-usage fee, both small individually, both easy to forget when totting up the budget.

A condo quote that does not mention the deposit, the service lift, or the working hours has not priced your actual project. It has priced a generic renovation and hoped the building rules would not matter.

How to read a condo quote so it cannot ambush you

1. Ask whether the deposit and lift booking are included in the quote or billed separately. Both are real costs even though neither buys you a finish.
2. Ask what happens if the JMB rejects the first submission. Resubmission delays are common, and a contractor who has done this before will already have a plan for it.
3. Confirm the working-hours assumption behind the timeline. A four-week estimate built on landed-house hours will not survive a condo's restricted schedule.
4. Ask directly whether your wet areas are moving. If yes, confirm who is applying for the local council permit and how long that typically takes in your area.
5. Get the waterproofing method and warranty in writing, not just a mention that it will be done. This is the line item that protects the ceiling below you.

Our condo renovation and design and build services both start the same way regardless of property type: a site visit, a scope written down before a price is attached to it, and the strata paperwork handled as part of the project rather than left for you to chase between quotes.

How we handle the strata layer

We have submitted enough JMB and MC applications to know that the paperwork is not a formality you can rush. We prepare the floor plan and scope submission, confirm the deposit and any building-specific fees before they surprise you, and build the working-hour restrictions into the schedule we hand you, not into an excuse we give you later. If your wet areas need to move, we tell you before you sign, because that is a different permit and a different price, and it should never be a surprise three weeks in.

Sources

Cost ranges and strata rules on this page are drawn from Malaysian sources published in 2026, including iHome.my, Houz.com.my's condo renovation cost guide and its JMB/MC regulations guide, Speedhome's strata management guide, Outbox Design's condo renovation guide, Design Bliss Malaysia, and iProperty's guide to renovation permits and working hours. The approval requirement itself is set out in the Strata Management Act 2013. Ranges vary between sources and none of them replaces a scoped quote for your own unit.

Read next: What a renovation actually costs in Malaysia · condo renovation · design and build