Tips to Reduce the Impact of a Burglary

Each year, the FBI tracks extensive statistics for crimes occurring in the United States. In addition to tallying the number of offenses, they also track the damage done by the crimes themselves. In 2019, the latest year for which this statistic was available, the average burglary costs homeowners $2,661. At Northeast Security Solutions, we believe in a security approach that makes experiencing any burglary as unlikely as possible. However, we also recommend taking steps to minimize the damage if one does occur. Today, we share some of our top tips to reduce the impact of a burglary.

First, we’ll share a couple ways to keep your valuables out of the wrong hands. This includes remaining vigilant about where you store your most valued possessions. Additionally, we also share how you can use a safe to create even more security. From there, we shift our focus to the ways that a security system can both help prevent a burglary and help alleviate the damage done if a break-in does occur. Finally, we’ll share some quick tips to help you secure your car by being mindful about your spare keys. Homeowners often completely neglect this very important aspect of home security! Now, let’s dive in with a look at keeping your valuables away from burglars.

Keep Your Valuables Out of Sight and Out of Mind

During a break-in, thieves have a few things in mind at all times. First and foremost, they know what they wish to find. Thieves prioritize jewelry, cash, electronics, and expensive medications that they can sell on the street. Knowing what items you have that burglars may wish to snatch can help you prepare for a potential crime in your own home. Furthermore, burglars also have a “clock” in their mind that ticks while committing a crime. Thieves only want to spend a few minutes in a house at most before escaping. This means that the longer it takes to access valuables, the more likely they will be to settle for taking only easily accessible items. Keeping your most valuables items away from thieves for as long as possible goes a long way towards minimizing loss experienced during a burglary. Let’s look at some specific tips to make this happen.

Avoid Putting Valuables in Easy-to-Find Locations

A handful of years back, Georgia Fox affiliate Fox 5 created an influential news story when they published the results of a survey that they gave to 99 convicted burglars. The survey included a variety of questions about how burglars carried out their crimes. Burglars gave candid answers about how they broke in to homes and what they looked for. Overall, burglars shared that a “bedside drawer” was the best place to find valuables. Of course, keeping jewelry, money, and credit cards together in an easy-to-remember location may be convenient for homeowners. However, burglars also find this predictability convenient. We advise against making your bedroom a one-stop shop for burglars. If you do want to keep valuables in one place, we recommend making it a location that also hides these items and locks them up, as we share in our next tip!

Use a Safe to Keep Your Valuables Out of the Wrong Hands

Putting your most valued and irreplaceable possessions in a safe can add security in a couple ways. For one, many safes can help you hide valuables. Wall safes, for example, attach to the studs of your wall. Then, homeowners cover the safes with a picture or other hanging. Unless burglars start ripping pictures from your walls, this can keep a thief from ever seeing the items you least want found. Additionally, even finding a safe still requires extra work to get to the items inside. If you follow our 10 Best Practices for Safes, then that means you’ve also chosen the right safe for your home and installed it properly. Doing so can prevent burglars from easily hacking into your safe or carrying it away.

We also recommend keeping weapons locked away in a safe. A burglar finding a weapon creates a huge threat if you or a family member returns home with a thief in the house. We offer specific safes for guns that come in all shapes and sizes. Locking up your weapons can help with minimizing loss due to a break-in, and help keep everyone safe should you experience a crime. Now, let’s take a look at how a monitored alarm can help you reduce the impact of a burglary.

Install an Alarm System to Monitor Your Home

In our post Tackling Ten Common Home Security Myths, we discuss some of the reasons homeowners feel reluctant to install a security system. Many of our customers find themselves wary of this new addition to their home at first. After all, the majority of homeowners find older security systems difficult to use. Attempting to operate these systems can make the headaches of false alarms more difficult to avoid. Additionally, long-term monitoring contracts that may keep homeowners on the hook for security monitoring costs for several years also turn many customers away. However, modern security equipment has gotten quite easy to use and has gotten more effective than ever. Furthermore, a few companies (ourselves included) even offer security monitoring with no long-term commitment. If you find yourself hesitant about adding home security, we encourage you to read the post linked above.

The blaring siren and impending police response created by an alarm system can greatly assist in minimizing loss due to a home break-in. As we mentioned, thieves already have an internal clock ticking while committing a crime. The activation of a security system can make this clock tick much faster. In fact, 60% of the respondents to the survey we referenced earlier claimed that they would leave a home immediately if an alarm siren sounded upon breaking and entering. This fact makes installing an alarm system one of our top tips to reduce the impact of a burglary. Next up, let’s shift our focus to keeping perhaps your very most valuable possession as safe as possible in the case of a break-in.

Keep Spare Car Keys Out of Burglar’s Hands

When we discuss minimizing damage from a burglary, we should certainly mention watching out for most people’s very most expensive possessions: their cars. Many homeowners leave spare car keys hanging up next to doors or in kitchen drawers. Burglars often take these keys in the hopes of easily stealing a car in the near future. We recommend keeping spare keys locked up or on your person whenever possible. Thieves can be quite messy, and the time directly following a home break-in can often be hectic and chaotic. Among all the confusion, missing keys often go unnoticed by homeowners. Keeping these keys in a safe or on your person can help alleviate this danger.

Putting Our Tips to Reduce the Impact of a Burglary to Work

We hope that you find our tips to reduce the impact of a burglary useful for your own situation. We certainly encourage you to contact us with any questions this post may raise for you. Moreover, we also invite you to have us out for a site survey to provide a complimentary security audit. While on site, we can address any and all of your existing security concerns. Furthermore, we can point out security deficiencies that we find during our visit, as well as solutions for them. Over 36-plus years in business, we’ve helped over a thousand customers create complete security plans for their homes. As we mentioned, we focus as much as possible on burglary prevention. However, we still need to take these steps to make a burglary as palatable as possible if it does occur. Together, we can create a complete plan to keep your home, your valuables, and your family as safe and secure as possible.