As the spring turns to summer this weekend, we enter peak vacation season. For those with secondary homes, this means quite a bit of extra activity. Of course, many of our customers own vacation homes that serve as summer residences around this time of year. Additionally, many people also rent out their vacation spots to guests as well. The increased activity, and possibly the occasional changing of visitors to your vacation home, creates extra focus on securing these houses during this heavy travel season. In today’s post, we will share some valuable tips for creating effective security for your vacation home!
First, we’ll review some of the challenges of creating security in your vacation home. This will create a solid base to understanding how our solutions solve these potential issues. From there, we’ll shift our attention to creating effective lock-based security. This discussion will include tips for installing the right locks as well as creating key control. Then, we’ll detail how you can install surveillance to watch over your rental property. This represents one of the fastest-growing areas of our industry. Finally, we’ll show you how a well-designed alarm can create security for your entire rental home. Now, let’s dive in with a look at the challenges you may face while securing your rental property.
What Makes Securing Your Vacation Home a Challenge?
Creating vacation home security presents a few obstacles when designing and implementing security plans. For starters, these properties can stay vacant for various amounts of time. Therefore, we must maintain a high level of security at all times. After all, thieves scout their victims’ homes out before attempting a break-in. Surely, they will recognize when a property remains empty for a significant period of time. This means that you should design your security with the knowledge that your rental properties may have a target on them.
Keys that provide key control. such as those that work with Medeco locks, help you track and limit access to keys.
Additionally, you must also design your security measures with the knowledge that this home may house many families if you rent it out. Therefore, consider installing easy-to-learn and highly-adaptable security equipment. While this may sound daunting, we have several suggestions throughout this post to make it work for you! Taking these precautions now will save you from having to replace or constantly re-train renters on using these security measures. Let’s move on by taking a look at how to address lock-related vacation property security.
Addressing Lock Security Issues
In many ways, locks provide a “first line” of defense against break-ins. Unfortunately, thieves often have no trouble getting through low-grade residential locks. Quite a while back, we created a post sharing How Professional Locksmith Services Help Homeowners. In that post, we shed some light on how greatly the quality of common locks can vary. Many customers find themselves surprised to learn that most household locks fit the lowest industry standards. Of course, we do not recommend installing these locks at any point in time. However, the stakes get even higher when choosing locks for properties that will stay vacant for some time. Installing high-quality locks can go a long way towards achieving rental property security. For example, Medeco, our preferred lock manufacturer, makes locks that provide tremendous security against both picking and blunt force attacks.
We also have a couple ways that we can help you create key control for your vacation home. For starters, Medeco locks come with a key-control system. This means that nobody else can make copies of your keys. In turn, as long as you receive your keys back when visitors leave, you know for sure that they have not created extra keys to come back uninvited later on. Additionally, we also recommend that you have us re-key your property periodically. Every cylinder has small pins in it that interact with the proper key to unlock your door. The re-keying process involves changing out these pins to create a new pattern that works with a different key. Keeping up with this tip takes the danger of older keys out of the equation entirely. Next up, let’s look at the valuable roles that cameras can play in creating effective security for your vacation home.
Putting “Eyes” on Your Property at All Times
Since you can only spend a limited amount of time at your vacation home, installing surveillance cameras can prove especially useful. Doing so provides multiple layers of security. First and foremost, you can use cameras to monitor properties for crime. Furthermore, installing surveillance allows you to monitor how well any renters care for your home as well. Of course, we certainly do not recommend installing cameras in intrusive locations. However, installing surveillance that provides a good view of their property can help you determine what caused damage to a home if anything does occur. We install cameras that users can view live remotely in real time, even from offsite! Moreover, we install recorders to capture and store video for future viewing.
Additionally, cameras add a great proactive threat to potential criminals. Individuals approaching your home with ill intentions and seeing cameras will likely choose another target. Visitors who value security will also appreciate the addition of cameras on any rental property. If something does happen at your property, security cameras help catch those responsible and save innocent parties from suspicion. Now, let’s shift our focus to creating effective vacation home security through the use of a security system.
Designing an Effective Alarm System
Our post on Smart Security System Design shares some of the many choices alarm customers have when designing a security system. Many customers choose the most “efficient” alarm design possible. For example, using a few motion detectors rather than several window sensors can help save a little money on the alarm install. Furthermore, many customers forego installing sensors such as glass break detectors and window shock sensors. Unfortunately, skipping out on this security can lead to issues down the road. Of course, this danger only increases when applied to empty vacation properties.
The QOLSYS IQ Panel 4 features an easy-to-use interface, allowing for the easiest alarm use and programming possible.
As a landlord, we recommend that you take a more comprehensive approach to system design. This can help catch criminals at the point of entry, rather than allowing them to explore your house before getting “caught” by the alarm. The sooner the alarm siren sounds during an attempted break-in, the greater the chance the thief retreats before getting inside the home. Likewise, the sooner the alarm goes off, the sooner our central station dispatches the authorities. We find the additional security this tip provides well worth the investment.
Additionally, our preferred alarm system, the QOLSYS IQ Panel 4, provides an extremely intuitive touchscreen interface. This makes it easy to complete tasks such as changing user codes or system settings. As we mentioned earlier, vacation properties can go through a variety of tenants over the years. Therefore, creating an easy and customizable alarm experience goes a long way in effectively securing these homes!
Putting it All Together and Creating Effective Security for Your Vacation Home
We hope that this post helps your efforts in creating effective security for your vacation home. As always, we encourage you to contact us with any questions this post may raise for you. We will happily answer any and all of your security-related inquiries. Furthermore, we also encourage you to take advantage of our free site survey program. We offer complimentary security audits and equipment quotes to both new and current customers alike.
Perhaps you have some security in your vacation home, but want to take advantage of some of the advice doled out in this post. Or, maybe you have very little in the way of security now, and want help designing a complete plan from the ground up. Either way, we are happy to help! Over our 38 years in business, we’ve helped over a thousand customers secure both primary and secondary residences. Together, we can create a complete security plan to keep your property — and everyone on it — as safe and secure as possible!