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This time of year, the delivery companies are REALLY busy. And if you haven't noticed they use a lot of rental trucks. FedEx and UPS come down our street every day. Some days in rental trucks. But I always notice. It would be very easy for someone to pull up to a house in a box truck, hop out with a "uniform" on, and rob a house without many neighbors taking notice. You don't have to be the nosiest neighbor, but paying attention and taking pucs if you are suspicious, may help catch some of these crooks.
Rarely do the crooks look like the guys on the ADT commercials.....gang members covered in tattoos, or wearing sports jerseys!
While it doesn't make it foolproof, it helps out quite a bit. Doors are very easy to kick in.
I wish they built new homes here, as they do in Florida, exterior doors open out, thus providing harder to kick in a door, as well as the intended reason for wind/hurricane protection ! Makes sense !
I wish they built new homes here, as they do in Florida, exterior doors open out, thus providing harder to kick in a door, as well as the intended reason for wind/hurricane protection ! Makes sense !
I don't think that its any hard to break in those doors. My builder installed backdoors that swing out and I hated it. It was the first thing I changed after I moved in, along with adding a storm door.
And, my neighborhood has had, I think, almost a dozen break-ins this year...all with backdoors that swing out. One of the houses had video and caught two of the guys...it didn't look too hard for them to break into it. The video is what led to (at least one) of the guys' arrest so now our neighborhood is getting smart and more people are installing cameras.
When the previous string of break-ins started, I went to the local Goodwill and got a used dog leash to tie to my back fence, and got a LARGE dog water dish to put just next.
Only cost a few bucks and probably a better deterrent than a fake alarm company sign.
When the previous string of break-ins started, I went to the local Goodwill and got a used dog leash to tie to my back fence, and got a LARGE dog water dish to put just next.
Only cost a few bucks and probably a better deterrent than a fake alarm company sign.
Every little bit helps I suppose, but the effectiveness of an alarm sign often depends on placement. In a highly visible area it can omit your property from the case-out list while the baddies are driving down the street looking for prospects, where things like a dog bowl sit low and are less visible, generally requiring them to already have committed to being on or very near the property to see the deterrent.
Can't hurt though, I don't suppose -- as long as its constantly kept clean and looks recently sipped from.
Every little bit helps I suppose, but the effectiveness of an alarm sign often depends on placement. In a highly visible area it can omit your property from the case-out list while the baddies are driving down the street looking for prospects, where things like a dog bowl sit low and are less visible, generally requiring them to already have committed to being on or very near the property to see the deterrent.
Can't hurt though, I don't suppose -- as long as its constantly kept clean and looks recently sipped from.
I think a "BEWARE OF DOG" sign would be more effective. You can hang those outside the fence.
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I think a "BEWARE OF DOG" sign would be more effective. You can hang those outside the fence.
Those can surely help too, although some HOA restrictions might not like signs on fences (or even fences in some cases). But along those lines, for a little more money you can get a motion sensor that when activated sounds like you have a pack of rabid Dobermans inside your house just daring someone to come in. In case you don't have enough burglars to have some fun with it, you can practice on friends, neighbors and my all-time favorite: unsolicited door-to-door religious propagandists, just for the entertainment value of watching them come off the ground when its activated
The only issue with any of the fake dog strategies is that if by some chance the burglar had some connection to someone who was at the house legitimately (let's say you hire a handyman you haven't used before and he's got a drug habit and cases homes for his buddies). He is going to know by way of doing work that there's no dog.
A fake alarm sign could potentially have the same risk but probably won't unless he's doing electrical work -- because he can't see it doesn't mean it's not there.
Overall I think multiple anti-theft measures are the best plan. The more you have, even if they aren't foolproof measures, is going to add "pain in the arse" points to your home on their list of potential targets, and if a home seems like too much of a pain or a risk, a crook just won't deal with it at all.
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