Keeping valuable items safe at home brings a certain amount of risk. Burglaries happen every single day, costing homeowners across Australia thousands in damages. However, there are ways you can protect your belongings and reduce your exposure to the risk of burglary. Here are a few things you can do right now to keep your precious belongings safe.
Make Your House a Tough Target
One of the best ways to keep your valuables safe is to make your house a target that is just too much hassle for potential burglars. Home invasions are rarely random. In most cases, experienced burglars spend a few days casing their targets. This stands true especially if your house is in the “bad” part of town. Your house doesn’t have to be the Ft. Knox of your neighborhood. No, all it needs to do is appear to be a tougher nut to crack than houses around it.
Best of all, you can do this without spending too much money. In fact, simple warning signs are often enough of a deterrence. If you post signs such as “beware of the dog” or similar, you’ll greatly reduce your chances of being burglarized.
You can go a step further and get in touch with some of your local home alarm companies. Ask them for stickers and signs that say your home is secured by X or Y system. Alternatively, make your own or get ones from the internet.
Burglars will rarely bother with such houses as they are simply too much hassle to loot. Of course, you could go the full 9 yards and install a home surveillance system and give any potential burglars even more of a deterrence.
Don’t Brag In Public
The best way to put a massive target on your back is to go around bragging about your valuables to people you don’t really know. Despite how commonsense this tip seems, sometimes we’re not aware of our company, or we simply talk too loud on accident. Either way, talking about your valuables in the presence of random people is a good way to make you the most interesting person to the wrong crowd.
Additionally, try not to have your valuables exposed in a way that makes them visible from the street. This is especially important if you live on a street that sees a lot of pedestrian traffic, or if it’s a busy roadway. People have a tendency to take a peek into other people’s homes. The same goes for burglars, only they will often come back while you’re not there.
Install a Safe
Everything we’ve mentioned so far falls under passive anti-burglary measures. Installing a safe is an active measure.
Get in touch with your local vendors to see what’s available. If you’re from Western Australia and looking for safes in Perth is a good place to start your search. Either way, a safe can be a great investment depending on the nature of your valuables.
Safes come in different shapes and sizes, and contrary to what movies tell us, they aren’t so easy to crack. A proper safe will be bolted to the floor or a wall, making it impossible to snatch. The belongings you place in your safe will be secure.
Of course, the more valuable your prized possessions are, the more sophisticated your safe should be. Modern safes feature all kinds of technologies, including advanced flame-resistant properties that will keep your things safe even in the case of a fire. The key is to figure out what kind of safe you need, and what level of protection is necessary to meet your security requirements.
Advanced Alarm Systems
Home alarms are both deterrence and an active security measure. Installing an alarm system in your home will make burglars think twice before they attempt to break into your place. Modern alarm systems are incredibly sophisticated, to a point where they can’t be defeated without using technologies that are often out of reach for most common criminals.
A proper home alarm system will notify you and the authorities the moment someone enters your home. Depending on the police response time, they might be able to reach your address fast enough to catch the burglars red-handed. In fact, such scenarios unfold every day.
Another benefit of installing a home alarm system is the ability to monitor your home while you’re at work, or even abroad. Thanks to the advancements of mobile technologies and the internet, you can tie into your home alarm system’s feed and have any alarms reach you as notifications. You can then choose to call the authorities if they haven’t been notified already.
Insure Your Valuables
No matter what you do and how hard you try, sometimes you’ll draw the short end of the stick. Valuables get stolen, perish in house fires, or get destroyed in floods. Because of that, it’s always a good idea to get insurance on anything you simply can’t stand to lose. Insurance most likely won’t be able to replace your valuables if they’re a unique piece of a family heirloom, however, you’ll still be reimbursed for the damages sustained due to the burglary.
f you are insuring your belongings through home insurance, make sure to take your phone and carefully document all of your key valuables. That way, even if your house burns down and everything is lost, you’ll have video evidence that shows the complete inventory of items you’ve lost, including your most prized possessions.
Some Planning Goes A Long Way
The best way to keep your valuables from being stolen is to apply a mix of everything we’ve mentioned above. Make yourself a hard target, but also invest in active protection measures such as a home safe and an alarm system.
Do these guarantee that your home won’t be burglarized? Unfortunately, the answer is no. However, once implemented, all of these methods will greatly reduce your chances of becoming a victim of a home invasion. It’s all about letting the burglar know that your house isn’t worth the risk and that they’ll have to work extremely hard if they want to steal from you.