Securing Your Home Following a Robbery

Your home is your castle, your inner sanctum, the one place you can truly feel at peace. Unfortunately, when a residence is burglarized, its occupant’s entire world is liable to be turned upside down. After all, if you’re not even secure in your own home, where can you feel safe? If you’re determined to prevent your home from being burglarized again, there are several practical steps you can take to ensure its long-term security. 

Exercise Caution When Issuing House Keys

In the interest of keeping your home secure, you should be very selective about who you issue house keys to. While this may seem like a no-brainer, a surprising number of homeowners don’t think twice before issuing keys to friends, neighbors and close acquaintances. The more house keys you have floating around, the greater the likelihood one of them will fall into the wrong hands. Every time one of your acquaintances misplaces a key or has duplicates produced, the odds of your home being burglarized increase. With that in mind, exercise extreme caution when entrusting other people with keys to your home. For maximum safety, it’s advised that you only distribute keys to members of your immediate family, as well as any friends or relatives who reside in your home. Even if other people within your circle can be trusted, there’s no guarantee keys given to them won’t fall into the wrong hands.

Invest in Keyless Locks

If entrusting other people with house keys has proven detrimental to your security, consider investing in keyless locks. Keyless locks come in a number of varieties, including electronic, fingerprint-based and Wi-Fi operated. After equippingyour doors with these locks, the only people who will be able to enter your residence are those who have access to your codes. If you suspect these codes have fallen into the wrong hands, simply change them. As you’ll find, this is considerable easier and more cost-effective than changing your locks and having new keys made.

Don’t Advertise That You’re Away

When they leave home for extended periods, many homeowners inadvertently advertise the fact that they’re away. Light being left off or kept on indefinitely are fairly solid indicators that you’re not home. Furthermore, the latter option stands to increase your electricity bill exponentially. This is where automatic light timers come into play. As the name suggests, these devices automatically turn various lights in your home on and off in a manner that simulates normal patterns. Additionally, have a trusted friend or family member pick up your mail while you’re away. If no one is available to do this, contact your local Post Office about temporarily cancelling delivery. Lastly, if you’re going to be away from home for more than a day or two, have calls to your home phone forwarded. Before carrying out a break-in, many burglars call homes to determine whether or not anyone’s around. 

Coming home to a house that’s been thoroughly ransacked and burgled can be downright traumatizing. Having your personal space violated in such a manner can change the way you look at home security. In the quest to keep your home safe from prowlers, burglars and other disreputable characters, the previously-discussed tips are sure to come in handy.