Lake Havasu winter home (rental, crime, buying a house)

[easyman]

I am thinking about buying a house at Lake Havsu City to live in for the winter months only. I wonder if it would be safe to leave it locked up in the spring and summer or do vandals destroy empty houses there?

[kdog]

You'd be fine. Lots of folks do that. Most of the residential areas are upscale tract-home neighborhoods. Suspicious behavior and vandals would be noted pretty quickly. It's not like you're out in the desert which is an entirely different matter.

[BillieHiser]

Lots of people do the same thing and their homes are fine. As long as you take typical precautions like stopping the mail and paper, having someone check occasionally, etc, yours should be fine also. And if you wanted to you could rent it as a vacation rental while you aren't there - many people do that as well.

[chetc]

From the Havasu paper 2-4-11

The number of reported residential burglaries, and theft-from-vehicle crime trends are slightly trending upward from 2009. However, when compared to 2009 incidents cleared by arrest, a slight decrease was noted in those types of crimes.

For example, 218 residential burglaries were reported in 2010 and 42 were cleared. In 2009, 193 of the same crime were reported and, coincidentally, 42 were cleared.

The report of commercial burglaries decreased by 21 in 2010 with 82 reported compared to 103 reported in 2009. However, the trend increases with 26 of those 82 reports being cleared by arrest in 2010, and 24 of 103 cleared in 2009.

[billybones]

My parents and brother live in Havasu. They know most of their neighbors in their areas. They all seem to watch out for one another. My parents have a neighbor who has a house in CA and Havasu. They often are out in their 5-wheel as well. They let my parents know when they are leaving and coming back to Havasu along with a cell phone number. My parents are always around so they keep an eye on the place.

It might be my imagination but people in LHC seem happier, more friendly and helpful than other places I've visited. Like already stated, do the drill like you're going on vacation you should be fine. Being a friendly neighbor will be the best advice of all.

[bobbymcsnoddy]

There are so many "snow bird" homes in Havasu. A reasonable precaution would be to not leave anything extremely valuable in the house that could be easily pawned by criminals, i.e. computers, high end technology items, etc. Get to know your neighbors.