How to Keep Your Home Secure From Burglary Without Spending a Fortune

We would all like to think that our home is a secure place that we can feel safe in, but the sad reality is that household burglary is actually one of the most common crimes in Australia. Statistics show that Australians are aware of this fact, with a full 36 per cent of Australians believing that their house will be broken into at some point in a given year.

Is there anything that you can do to reduce the likelihood that your home will be broken into, or prevent an attempted break in before anything happens? There are a few tips and tricks to take into consideration, and all Australians should be taking precautions to ensure that their home is as safe and secure as possible when they’re not there.

1. Make your home look unattractive to a burglar in the first instance

Most burglars are lazy and looking for an easy score. If it looks like your home is going to be too much trouble for them, they’ll generally pass over it to target another house instead. We discuss installing strong security doors below, but in addition to that, make use of good deadbolt locks, and install an outdoor security camera system; particularly in areas that are sheltered away from easy view.

One of the things that burglars don’t like is when the house is in easy view; either from the street or from neighbours. Poor lighting in the area, or plenty of trees and other places to hide away, are appealing to burglars, because it gives them more time to get access to the home. Make sure to keep the tall trees away from your home’s exterior, and make sure there’s plenty of lighting around the home at night.

Another effective trick is to make your home look like it is being lived in at all times. Home security solutions now include power plugs that operate on timers (or via a phone application) that allow you to control when the light switches on and off. Vary the time that the lights switch on and off, and even if you’re on vacation, the burglar can’t be certain that the house is being lived in, even if he or she is monitoring it.

Also, ask a family member or a neighbour you can trust to pick up your mail as frequently as possible. Nothing says ‘vacant house’ quite like a buildup of mail in the letterbox. You can ask the post office to hold some, but that won’t account for the junk mail.

2. Buy high-quality security doors

As the first line of defence into your home, protective security doors and screens for windows are a must. In these secure screens, you want a couple of common features; you need the mesh to be able to withstand punishment, as if it’s easy to cut or dismantle, it defeats the purpose of the screen. It needs to be able to fit a really good lock. And, finally, you want it to suit the decor of the home.

One of the odd things about home burglary is that there is a point where a well-secured home is too well secured, and therefore becomes an attractive target for home invasions, because the burglar will be working on the assumption that all the security is there to protect greater wealth. Understated but functional is the key to security doors and to keep your home secure, and that’s exactly what the SP Screens range provides.

3. Don’t broadcast your movements online

Burglars are getting increasingly sophisticated in how they go about working out which houses to target, and in many cases, their victims are giving them all the information they need by posting about what they’re getting up to away from home. Yes, your friends and family want to see your holiday snaps while you’re away, but if a burglar sees this, then they’re going to know you’re not at home. If you must share updates of being away from home, make sure that you trust your social network, and that you’re able to set the photos to private, so that the broader public can’t see them.

4. Shred papers before binning them

It goes without saying that burglars are not the kind of people to care too much about going through a person’s trash if that makes it easier for them to decide which houses to ‘hit’, as well as what to look for in the short few minutes they have inside. You make their job easier if you put documents with important information in the trash without shredding them first. A shredder isn’t an expensive investment, but it’s an important one if you don’t want unscrupulous people finding out things about you.

Protecting your home from break ins

Home security is important, and something of great concern to most Australians. There are all kinds of security systems and similar that you can install into your home to improve its security and to keep your home secure, but at the end of the day, there are also a number of very simple things that you can be doing to discourage the burglar from looking twice at your home in the first place. A good security door from SP Screens, and some clever tricks to make it look like your home is continuously occupied is all it will often take to make would-be criminals look elsewhere.