Sécurité des logements collectifs risks are not just parcel theft, car break-ins, organized burglaries, or late-night incidents that dominate headlines.
There’s a lot more.But why do shared residential spaces face such security challenges?
When something goes wrong, it often feels sudden, but the warning signs were there all along.
Doors are propped. Residents hold elevators. Deliveries pile up in open lobbies. Strangers blend in and move freely without being questioned.
Understanding where these risks actually come from is the first step to fixing them. In this blog, we tell you the top 5 real-world security challenges in multi-family residential buildings.
Moreover, we pair advanced remote video monitoring with real-time access, behavioral insight, and complete visibility, making the path to better security clear and actionable.
Challenge #1: Unauthorized individuals move through the property unnoticed:
National Crime Prevention Council data confirms multi-family apartments face an 85% higher burglary risk than single-family homes.
Reason?
The problem is that people are wandering here and there; no one notices or questions. They blend in as residents, visitors, or delivery drivers.
Which means unauthorized access in multi-family residences and freely moving about in areas such as:
- Main entrances and secondary doors.
- Parking garages and stairwells.
- Hallways and common areas.
- Mail rooms and package areas.
“Once someone gets past the first layer, condos often have no real way to control where they go, what they access, or how long they stay.”
Avec les la vidéo surveillance à distance, you watch anyone who enters and stays on your property 24/7/365.
IA pour la détection du vagabondage works best when used only in specific areas and during certain hours, such as the pool, garage, or dumpster areas at night.
AI-powered security cameras spot loiterers by detecting their dwell time. Unauthorized people lingering for too long in those areas means trouble.
Once they are detected, alerts are triggered at the remote video monitoring center. Vigilant remote operators issue live voice warnings, preventing the situation from escalating into theft or vandalism.
Challenge #2: Tailgating through secured doors:
Mostly, thieves do not break into multi-family residences.
They simply walk in.
That’s what happened at a luxury condo in downtown Miami: an attacker followed a resident through secured doors and assaulted a tenant inside.
The same method was used repeatedly across Sherman Oaks, Encino, and Van Nuys, where burglary crews hit multiple condos by doing nothing more than walking behind authorized residents.
C'est queue de peloton! It involves no alarms, no forced entry, and no resistance. Crimes often start with something as simple as a propped door.
You tap your fob, the gate opens, and suddenly you are forced to choose between letting a stranger follow you in or risking an awkward, sometimes aggressive confrontation. Renters become uncomfortable and worry about retaliation, and are frustrated that criminals can simply wait by the gate and walk in without effort.
Do you know that some condo managers often respond with rules like “wait for the gate to close”?
The practical solution is to take this burden off residents entirely. AI security cameras integrated with Remote Video Monitoring at main entrances and side doors can automatically detect tailgating in real time.
How to detect tailgating?
You start by deploying AI security cameras at entrances, garages, lobbies, and shared amenities.
As soon as a resident authenticates with a porte-clés or other access method, the system counts how many people cross the threshold. If more than one person uses a single credential, the AI immediately flags tailgating. Even in the busiest environments!
Challenge #3: Everyone has access to every place:
Gates and doors of mailrooms, gyms, pools, and lounges are frequently stuck open. Sometimes they are too slow to close, or someone leaves them open out of courtesy.
The tenants often have heated arguments with condo management over being allowed in. Tenants pour their heart out on social media.
Saying they are in constant fear of retaliation, harassment, or damage to their vehicles if they refuse entry to others.
What’s the solution to this high churn, frequent visitors, and delivery traffic blending in and moving through the property without challenge?
It’s simple: identify the high-risk access points in your condo building. It’s not just the front gate that needs security; we are talking about zoned and layered security for:
- Gates and side doors.
- Elevator and lobby access control.
- Parking garage.
- Bike room.
- Visitor and mail room.
- Stairwells.
Now, these are the areas where tailgating and loitering start, lead to theft, and unauthorized roaming begins.
Once those are mapped, you can easily assign who should have access and when.
La surveillance vidéo en direct garantit un environnement de vie plus sûr et plus intelligent.
Remote gate access control for entry:
Contrôle de barrières à distance utilise les caméras de vidéosurveillance (CCTV), and an intercom to verify visitors or deliveries via live video or two-way audio. After verification, the doors or gates are only opened for authorized visitors only.
Access control options for elevators and lobbies:
For elevators and lobbies, you can issue residents a card, fob, or phone credential that grants access only to their own floor and shared areas.
At the lobby and exterior doors, video intercoms let residents see and approve guests on their phone, while cloud-managed readers on all doors provide a live log and the ability to revoke access instantly. Door contact alerts tell you when something is forced or propped open.
Best solutions for securing parking garages and bike rooms:
In parking garages and bike rooms, you can move away from generic remotes and use RFID tags or license plate recognition for vehicles, paired with fob or phone access for pedestrian doors.
Bike and storage rooms are simple to control by granting access only to the units that rent or own those spaces.
How to implement visitor management and delivery control:
A cloud-based system makes managing visitor and delivery access much easier. Guests receive a QR code or PIN that works only for a set time and specific door or floor, and every entry is logged for accountability. We create contractor profiles that automatically expire when the job ends.
Deliveries are directed to secure package rooms or smart lockers, with one-time access codes for carriers and instant alerts to residents so parcels don’t sit out.
How to zone access levels for residents and staff:
Finally, zoning access keeps everything clean and controlled. Residents get tiered access based on:
- What they actually need.
- Staff receive broad but appropriate permissions.
- Vendors only get temporary access to the exact areas required.
When access is assigned this way, the building stays secure without residents feeling restricted, and you gain full visibility and control without extra daily effort. The Riverdale condo break-in proves how one stolen key can collapse an entire building’s security. As CBC put it, a thief grabbed a master key in seconds, stole a $5,000 bike, and triggered a $40,000 rekeying nightmare.
Avec les keyless access control, there would have been no master key to steal. Digital credentials can be limited by area, revoked instantly, and fully logged, preventing a single theft from compromising an entire building.
Challenge #4: Elevator security issues:
Elevators speed up unauthorized entry. Once someone slips past the lobby, unsecured elevator buttons let them ride to any floor. Whether they belong there or not.
Or when elevators are constantly out of service, everyone funnels through the same cab. Traffic spikes and oversight drops. That is exactly when strangers blend in.
Add to that the fact that many elevators have no cameras inside the cab. Incidents like harassment and theft go unnoticed until after the damage is done.
Furthermore, over 100,000 units were recalled after at least three serious child entrapment incidents, including a fatality when a child was trapped between doors.
The solution is to treat elevators as controlled access zones. La vidéosurveillance des ascenseurs specializing in Conforme à la norme ASME A17.1/CSA B44 solution combines live elevator video surveillance with touchscreen intercoms for non‑verbal two-way communication.
Challenge #5: The relentless rise of package theft:
Package theft in condos is not a mystery. Deliveries are left in lobbies, hallways, or mail areas with little oversight. Thieves grab and disappear.
It is because of easy access, busy shared spaces, and small everyday behaviors that add up to big security gaps.
Thieves enter through lobby doors, blending in as couriers, or riding elevators to hallways where packages sit unattended for hours.
High turnover and heavy delivery volumes make it easier for outsiders to go unnoticed, especially during evenings and holidays when staff stretches thin.
The fix is to close the loop among access, visibility, and response.
Controlled package rooms:
Secure package handling is also the responsibility of the condo management. Controlled package rooms with FOB or PIN access may reduce parcel theft.
Smart lockers that notify residents instantly and AI video monitoring that detects tailgating and loitering in real time change the equation.
Every incident needs a clear process: the incident logged, footage preserved, and the police report supported when needed. That is how you retain your tenants longer.
When all of these layers connect, we create a continuous chain of access control, not a series of disconnected doors, and stop unauthorized movement naturally without residents having to confront anyone.
Questions fréquemment posées :
What are the risks of multi-tenancy security?
Multi-tenancy buildings face higher security risks due to shared entrances, frequent visitors, tailgating, and limited visibility across common areas, which increase the likelihood of unauthorized access and theft.
What are the disadvantages of multi-family homes?
The main disadvantages of multi-family homes include reduced privacy, increased noise, shared security responsibilities, and greater exposure to theft or vandalism in common spaces.
What questions to ask when buying a multifamily property?
Ask key questions about how the property controls access, monitors common areas, manages packages and visitors, and documents and responds to security incidents.
Is multifamily property considered residential or commercial?
When used for housing, we consider multifamily properties residential, but we typically classify them as commercial real estate for ownership, financing, insurance, and security planning purposes.
Key takeaways for real-world security challenges faced by multi-family residences:
La plupart des multi-family security problems follow the same pattern. Tailgating opens the door, and once someone is inside, there are no real limits on where they can go. Elevators move risk vertically, giving strangers fast access to private floors, while passive cameras watch everything after the fact instead of stopping it.
Package theft flourishes in open lobbies and unsecured mail areas, and shared keys or fobs turn small mistakes into building-wide failures. Real protection starts when we zone access, monitor activity in real time, and intervene before incidents escalate.
Contactez-nous dès aujourd'hui pour obtenir une solution de sécurité personnalisée pour votre entreprise.
La surveillance vidéo en direct garantit un environnement de vie plus sûr et plus intelligent.
