Building-Wide Camera Systems for Landlords & Property Managers

The building owner or management company owns the footage — it's stored on a local NVR on the property. We set up separate access credentials for the superintendent and property manager, with no access given to individual tenants. Footage can be provided to law enforcement or used in civil proceedings at the owner's discretion. There's no cloud intermediary — the footage is on your hardware, under your control.

Yes — in New York, cameras in common areas of residential buildings are legal and standard practice. Lobbies, hallways, stairwells, laundry rooms, parking areas, and other shared spaces are all permissible. Cameras cannot be placed to look into private units, bathrooms, or areas where tenants have a reasonable expectation of privacy. We design coverage around this — common areas only, with no camera angles that inadvertently capture into apartment interiors through doors or windows.

A 10-unit walk-up with three floors typically needs 10–14 cameras: one covering the front entrance, one in the lobby/vestibule, one covering the mailboxes or package area, one per floor hallway (two to three cameras depending on layout), stairwell coverage at each landing, and one on the rear exit or building exterior. Buildings with a basement, laundry room, garage, or multiple entry points need additional cameras for those areas. We give you a specific count after walking the building.

Building management logs into the NVR, navigates to the date and time of the incident, and exports the relevant clip as a video file. We walk you through this process at handoff so you're not calling us every time an incident happens. Footage can be exported to a USB drive or downloaded directly from the NVR interface. For police reports, a video file exported from the NVR is the appropriate format — most departments can work with MP4 or AVI.

Yes — we install video intercoms alongside camera systems regularly. The intercom camera at the front door can be a dedicated intercom unit, a standalone IP camera integrated into the NVR, or both. A dedicated intercom handles the tenant call-and-buzz function while a separate NVR camera covers the entrance for recording purposes. If you're considering adding access control — electronic door strike, key fob entry — we can incorporate that into the same project and give you a combined scope.