You can’t be too careful when it comes to protecting your family, assets, and your items of value. Nonetheless, there are multiple ways you can use to keep your house from being robbed. House break-ins can be devastating. It creates a state of paranoia, your privacy gets violated, and above all, everything of value that you hold dear is at stake! It’s an absurd experience; however, house robbery can be prevented. Herein are ways of protecting your house from inside and outside. Whether you are on vacation, too, this guide will come in handy!

Ways of protecting your house from outside

When it comes to house robbery prevention, the exterior layout of your house can work to the advantage of the burglars or work against them. Of course, your primary target is to create difficulties for the robber to get in, but how so? Here are easy ways of protecting your house from outside.

1. Take a walk around your house and explore the possible vulnerabilities.

Use a thief to catch a thief! How? It would help if you had a burglar’s eyes in detecting spots susceptible to house invasions. Sufficed to say if your eyes can spot weaknesses on the windows, a thief will use it, so secure and strengthen it. And should you be unable to identify the weak spots, use the cops to your aid?

Moreover, when looking for weak spots, try to identify precious items that are visible from outside. Don’t tempt burglars the more or give them multiple targets. Instead, you should disguise items that can attract them. These small adjustments can keep away burglars and prevent a potential home robbery.

2. Trim shrubs on the entrances

Shrubs on your house’s entrance can be hiding spots for burglars. Should you not trim it, you will fall victim to a home robbery. Eliminating hiding spots will work against your enemy; they won’t have good vantage points to do surveillance on your house. Without proper surveillance and the right hiding spots, the chances of a house robbery being successful are minimal. Moreover, since you are working against the thief from getting into your house, you can plant thorny shrubs on a window or bar them with spikes.

3. Create the right fence.

If you lack one, doing the installation will perform the tasks of keeping you safe from a home robbery. You can use an open chain-link or metal fencing that is inserted into concrete. If you are using solid fences, burglars will easily climb, so consider putting sharp pointed tops on them. And you can integrate it with electricity at night. If you are uncomfortable with the ugly outlook, take a look at barbed-wire fences.

4. Install motion sensor lighting

Having motion sensors installed around your house and, more specifically, on entrances will keep an invader away even before getting near the house. You should therefore add lighting with motion sensors in dark spots of your house. If you are renting an apartment, talk to your landlord about the installations.

5. Make a good relationship with your neighbors.

In neighborhoods where people live in a utopia, house robberies are less to none. They can easily spot a stranger since they are familiar with each other. So why don’t you build a good relationship with your neighbors? Neighbors can also be valuable assets when it comes to offering an extra eye on the outside. They will be around when you are engaged in different locations and alert you should there be ongoing suspicious activities.

Together with your neighbors, you can light the entire street and even form a neighbor watch program. With the program, you can contact the police to give you a lecture on how to detect a suspicious stranger. Thereon you can know what to do if you spot one. A neighborhood that can tell when a burglary is in progress is well forearmed. Once this is into the attention of potential thieves, they will keep their distance.

6. Lock your gates, garages, and fences

Is it worth to invest in a high-quality padlock? Yes, and if you doubt, you will get certain after falling victim to a house robbery. If not being used, your garage should always remain locked as some can be used to access your house. With gates, locking them will prevent stalking burglars from accessing your house.

Ways of protecting your home from inside.

In as much as you have protected your house exteriorly, you can’t be too confident if the same is not done on the inside. For this reason, you should ensure that the security inside your house (the targeted zone for a house robbery) is enhanced. Below are some ways of enhancing your house security.

· Always close your windows and doors.

An open door or a window on the exterior of your house can be a burglar’s warm entrance. You should keep them shut, even if you are inside the house. When it comes to enhancing your house security from within, you should update window locks. Burglars always identify weak spots (on windows) from which they can access your house. The exterior door, on the other hand, should be secure with deadbolt locks. If your door opening mechanism is by sliding, you should put vertical locks in place or wooden rods to prevent them from being lifted.

Above all this, you should never leave your door open when you are away, even if it’s for a short duration. More also, lock your doors consistently when it’s raining. Burglars don’t take-offs due to non-conducive weather changes; beware lest you become a victim of home robbery!

· Get the locks renewed if you are renting a new place.

As a renter, you should ask the landlord to change the locks. You should trust no one. For this reason, even if the previous tenant returned all the keys, you are not sure if more copies were made and distributed to malevolent hands. I live in West Palm Beach and I hired a locksmith West Palm Beach FL to change my locks – and I am so glad I did. Remember, it’s best to be safe rather than paranoid about a stranger getting into your locked house and hence a house robbery.

· Keep the property of value in safe or lockboxes.

Should your safe be small and bot pinned on the wall or floor, consider bolting them on the floor. If you choose to mount it on a wall, ensure that it’s not readily displayed. More also, you can drill a hole inside your wall and stash the safe in it. A house robbery is not planned according to your house layout since the perpetrators are not familiar with your house’s layout.

Consequently, they will get away with easy to find things, and if your safe is not pinned, you will suffer the consequences. Should you opt for a safe, only issue the passcode to trusted parties (a family member or a loved one). You should not leave copies of written passwords in an open location.

· Don’t stash your spare key on flower vases outside or on mats.

Of course, thieves are smart enough to look under the mats and flower vases! You should be smart and leave your keys with a trusted neighbor. If your

neighbors are far from you, consider using a lockbox that’s far away in a discreet zone of your asset.

· Do a security system installation.

Security systems feature multiple components with different functions. The most significant ones are the outdoor motion detectors and sensor alarms attached to exterior doors or garage doors. The outdoor motion sensor also alerts neighbors of a home robbery; hence it’s multipurpose.

On the other hand, security cameras will keep away house invaders since they’re a symbol of a well-secured house. Apart from alerting the neighbors, alarms can be in line with police patrols and 911. It’s all up to your advantage if you want to minimize house robbery vulnerabilities.

Protecting Your Home While You’re on Vacation

At most, what we all know is that robberies escalate in holiday seasons. It’s an optimal time for any burglar since no one is inside the house; the robbery becomes even more comfortable! Even though your house is vulnerable during these times, you still have to make your house safe. You have to make burglars go through difficulties and eventually give up. Here are some ways you can protect your house when you are on vacation.

Repeatedly, check all the windows and doors before your departure.

Since you won’t be around anytime soon, it’s imperative to ensure your house is well-locked. You also have to leave the blinds and curtains (some) unclosed to give the burglar an illusion that you are house. There is a high tendency of thieves targeting a closed house with dropped curtains and binds.

Communicate to your neighbors to create a semblance of live-in while you are away.

Having your neighbors do your trash cans, pick any of your delivered packages, and check your mailbox can also keep burglars away. Should these measures not be taken, the piled mailbox and non-used trash bins will attract potential robbers. Given that you will be away on an extended vacation, you should tell your neighbor to leave footprints or car tire tracks from your house. With the illusion that someone is in the house, a house robberycan be well prevented. Also, paying someone to do your lawn and trim your fence when you are on extended summer vacation will work against burglars.

Above all, leaving your keys with a trusted neighbor instead of stashing them under a mat will be a wise move. Leaving the key behind will help during emergencies, but it’s far more essential to prevent house robbery. Your neighbor will have to check your house regularly to see if anything is bizarre.

They can also check if door alarms are functioning as well as the lighting systems. It will be wise to provide a means by which you can be contacted while you are away. As a home robbery preventive measure, this act/relationship should be cultivated among neighbors, and so to speak, you should always do the favors when your neighbor is in need.

Set your light timers

You should choose a few rooms that can be seen from the outside and make sure they remain lit. Once done, any potential house robber brushing through the neighborhood will know that you are inside the house. The outdoor lights, specifically on entrances, should also be switched on by timers every night or evening. And for a fact, a well-lit and bright house will keep house robbers away and attract good guests.

Disengage your garage’s automatic opener once you have locked it.

Here is yet another straightforward but always forgotten way of keeping your house safe when you are on vacation. In as much as garage doors seem impenetrable, there are automatic ways of opening them from outside. You must take extra steps to secure them. Since you are out on vacation, you will not need the automatic opener anytime soon. Why should you not disengage it and fortify your security further?

Keep the vacation details to yourself.

It’s not an uncommon thing to find posts on social media concerning personal vacation plans. Sufficed to say it’s a trend, and if you are not aware that you are exploiting your vulnerabilities, you will probably go down the same road. Online stalkers from social media can use such posts to their advantage and rob you when you are away. You should, therefore, avoid telling your social media friends that you are away from home.

On the other hand, you should not leave the “not at home” message on the phone answering machine.

To sum up, house robbery may never be outdone in society, but it does not mean that you have to stay vulnerable. Why do you have to live in a paranoia state when you can follow the above steps and ensure that you are well protected? Call these steps into action, and reduce the chances of a crook getting into your house by 50 %.