In the present study, the inverse perturbation method is applied to the structural damage detection in conjunction with a system condensation technique. The system condensation technique is adopted to r esolve the problem due to the incomplete measurement of the degrees-of-freedom (DOFs) in a natural mode. However, the numerical difficulty may arise in the system condensation when the DOFs to be measured are not properly selected. Thus, the issue of sensor placement for structural damage detection, in the framework of the condensation technique-based inverse perturbation method, is considered in this study. Also, a methodology to measure the number of sensors required to obtain reliable damage detection is proposed and then verified through some illustrative example problem.