A kindergarten in the approved plans. Does it belong to the MC?
Can an MC recover a separately titled kindergarten parcel as common property by relying on the approved development plans?
A facility shown in approved development plans may later appear as a privately owned strata parcel. Can the management corporation recover it as common property?
In D’Aman Crimson Management Corporation v Alvin Wong Tze Hoong & Ors [2026] MLRHU 2229, the High Court examined that question in a dispute over a kindergarten parcel at D’Aman Crimson.
Background
The MC contended that Parcel 52 had been approved as a kindergarten facility and should have formed part of the development’s common property. It alleged that the developer had wrongly caused the facility to become a separate parcel which was subsequently transferred into private ownership.
The MC sought declarations that the parcel was common property and that the transfer was invalid, together with rectification and related relief.
The registered owners relied on their title and their position as purchasers for value. The dispute required the court to examine the development approvals, strata documents, earlier transactions and the grounds for challenging a registered title.
What did the court decide?
The High Court dismissed the MC’s claim. However, it did not dismiss the concerns underlying it as baseless.
The court accepted that the approved documents contemplated a kindergarten facility, separate from the 68 approved business units. It also found that the evidence did not satisfactorily explain how the facility had become a separately titled private parcel.
Those concerns were nevertheless insufficient, on the evidence before the court, to defeat the existing registered title.
The operative strata documents treated Parcel 52 as a separate parcel. The court distinguished earlier common-property cases by examining the wording of the approvals and the evidence of representations to purchasers. It also considered the intervening transactions and the position of the present registered owners.
The MC had not proved the grounds necessary to defeat their title under section 340 of the National Land Code. The court found insufficient proof of fraud, knowing participation or lack of good faith on their part, or of the other statutory grounds relied upon to challenge the title.
There was also no independent basis for rectification under section 417. The court explained that this provision gives effect to an established entitlement; it does not itself create the substantive right to cancel or rectify a title.
No order as to costs was made. The court recognised that the MC had brought a genuine communal concern before it.
The reasons record that the MC filed an appeal against the decision. The High Court’s findings should be read with that procedural position in mind.
What should MCs and owners take note of?
A facility’s intended use and its legal ownership are related but distinct questions. Showing that a kindergarten was required by the development approvals may support a complaint, but it does not automatically establish the right to cancel another person’s registered title.
This case also shows why a common-property claim requires more than one document. Development orders, approved building plans, strata plans, titles, sale agreements, brochures and the history of transfers may address different parts of the claim. The evidence must connect the alleged irregularity to the legal relief sought against the relevant parties.
The decision should not be read as allowing a developer to convert any communal facility into private property merely by obtaining a title. The court expressly recognised serious concerns about the parcelisation process. Its conclusion was that the MC had not established sufficient grounds for the relief sought on these facts.
Where a facility appears to have been wrongly excluded from common property, an early review of the approvals, title records and transaction history is important. Suspicion about the original subdivision must be developed into a properly supported legal claim, particularly where the parcel has since passed to other purchasers.
