How safe is your neighborhood? According to Consumer’s Advocate, 65 percent of burglaries in the US occur during the day, specifically the workday when people are least likely to be home. When it comes to Mequon, WI, the rate of burglaries is 206.2 per 100,000 people, according to City Data. While this is relatively low when compared to places like Chicago, which experiences 482 burglaries per 100,000 people, it’s still important to remain vigilant and take steps to prevent a burglar from targeting and robbing your home. Here at Leonard Insurance, we want you to feel safe and secure in your home, which is why we’ve developed these robbery deterrent tips.
4 Tips to Deter Criminals from Breaking into Your Home
Your home should be your sanctuary away from the hectic demands of the outside world. You should feel safe and secure at all times, but when someone kicks in your back door or smashes a window to gain entry, you can feel violated, scared, and unsafe. You may even consider moving to a different neighborhood. Thankfully, there are things you can do to make your home less appealing to criminals.
1. Maintain Your Landscaping
Overgrown yards are prime targets for burglars. If you have untrimmed trees and bushes and shrubs surrounding your entrances, criminals are better able to remain hidden while they walk onto your property and enter your home. Keeping your trees and bushes trimmed, and your grass mowed helps increase the visibility across your property, and it lets any potential criminals know that someone is maintaining the property and may be home.
2. Install Security Cameras
Consider installing security cameras inside your home and at every entrance, including your garage door. You may even want a camera facing the road or looking down your driveway. The presence of security cameras can help deter criminals from entering your home. Not to mention, if someone does break into your home, you’re more likely to have video evidence.
3. Keep Personal Paperwork and Valuable Items in a Safe
Birth certificates, credit cards, passports and other information with your identification numbers on it can be used to commit identity theft, allowing the criminal to use your name and social security number you open new lines and credit or pretend to be you while making transactions. In order to prevent your identification from getting into the hands of identity thieves, it’s important to keep your personal paperwork in a heavy locked safe that would be difficult to remove from your home.
4. Keep Your Vacation Plans Off Social Media
When all of your friends post as-it-happens vacation pictures on their social media accounts, you may be tempted to do the same thing. Unfortunately, posting your vacation pictures on your social media accounts while you are still on vacation can alert potential burglars to the fact that you are not home, and you won’t be home for several days. This means that they can rob your home and sell the items before you even know they are missing. For this reason, we advise that you never tell people you are going on vacation and do not post your vacation pictures on your social media accounts until you have returned home.
Make Sure Your Homeowners Insurance Policy is Up-to-Date
Having an up-to-date homeowners insurance policy from Leonard Insurance in Mequon, WI can help you replace your stolen items if your home does happen to get burglarized. Homeowners insurance policies help repair broken windows and busted doors when your home has been illegally entered, and it helps replace items like stolen TVs, tablets, computers, jewelry, and weapons. If you haven’t looked at your homeowner’s policy in a while, now may be a good time to review it. We recommend getting a homeowners policy with Replacement Cost Coverage rather than Actual Value Coverage. This is because Replacement Cost covers the actual cost of replacing the stolen items instead of their pre-theft value, which may be much less than the cost to purchase new items.
Surprising Crime Statistics
Do you know what state has the fewest burglaries per capita? You will be surprised. How about the most common thing burglars are looking for? Check out this infograph put together by ADP, which shares some surprising crime statistics.
https://www.adt.com/burglary-odds-across-america
