When you leave your home or business premise unoccupied or unsecured, there are some potential risks such as trespassing that can lead to vandalism or theft. It’s the responsibility of property owners to ensure that their empty premises are safe. Therefore, whether you want to sell or rent out your property, you’ll have to incur some expenses to keep your vacant property safe. In most cases, empty buildings usually face a higher risk of theft and vandalism. Property owners have some options to ensure vacant premises security, although most of them prefer finding private security guard companies. Below are some top tips for ensuring empty site security:
- CCTV and alarm installation
Although some empty property owners may just use warning signage stating that the premises are being monitored by CCTV or there are alarms, in order to avoid expenses, some intruders who known this trick might end up ignoring them. It’s therefore, essential to install CCTV cameras and alarms to make your property secure. You can install mobile alarm systems that have infra-red sensors on your premises so that in case of any emergency, a security company can get a notification that there’s unauthorized access to your vacant property and thereby providing an immediate response. On the other hand, CCTV cameras will keep watching what is happening around your property and record everything that is usually presented in a court of law during the prosecution of a criminal or intruder. The CCTV footage helps in clearly identifying incidents of vandalism and robbery.
- Make friendship with neighbours
If you have an empty residential or business property in an area, it’s essential to have a good relationship with those around. This is an effective way of ensuring that vandalism can’t happen to your property since there will be a quick response from those around. Your neighbours will easily alert you or even call security agencies when they notice something unusual happening on your empty property.
- Prompt waste removal
In most cases, vandalism occurs in vacant premises when there’s litter scattered around. These wastes are not only hazardous but also encourage bad behaviour where people will regularly visit to see if there are some useful items they can pick up. Having visible wastes on your vacant property can be a clear sign that now nobody is around, and thereby giving passers the opportunity to check what the wastes are. It’s, therefore, essential to keep your vacant premises
free from wastes to avoid attracting unnecessary attention. Call a waste removal company to clear the waste to maintain the elegance of your vacant premise.
- Warning signage
This is another effective empty site security measure that has been proved to work well. Having warning signage stating the security measures in place even if they aren’t there helps in keeping away intruders. The sign can either indicate there is installed CCTV, alarm system, armed security guards, or dogs. All these signs instil fear among intruders and thus keeping your vacant property secure.
- Maintaining your yard
Having yards in properties has become a habit these days. If a yard isn’t maintained properly and vegetation overgrows, then it will be easy for intruders to hide and vandalize your empty property. Look for a gardening service provider to always keep your garden well maintained every time.
- Lock the site up
Although many people may see locking windows and doors as something small, it can actually help in securing your empty property. windows and doors in the garage and bathroom are easy to access points to your property when left open. Locking the windows and doors using strong padlocks and heavy bolts is extremely important and helps to keep away intruders.
- Change locks regularly
You may have doubts sometimes about the security of your empty site. In this case, you need to change your locks. Apart from this, you may have some renovations on your vacant property where the contractors come when you’re not even around to see what’s happening and also escorting them during and after the repair or maintenance. Since you won’t know what’s happening in this case and who comes across your keys, it’s equally important to change the locks to avoid exposing and risking your vacant premises.
In conclusion, these are some top tips for ensuring empty site security. You can also construct electric barriers to keep away intruders from your empty site.