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Keeping Your Home Safe

How Secure Is Your Home?

If you’ve ever locked yourself out of your own house (as I did, just this morning), and frantically and fruitlessly tried to find some way to get in, you may have reached the conclusion that your home is about as secure as Fort Knox. Until another day comes when you return to your secure home and find that someone else did find a way to get through those locked doors and removed all your valuables while they were there.

According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, there were 88,778 burglary offenses reported in this state in 2017, and 63,052 of them were residential.

In general, reported crimes have been steadily declining and we are now at the lowest crime rate on record in 47 years, according to an article in the Sun Sentinel. 2017 saw a 4.5% drop from the previous year but, if you are one of the victims, you are 100% impacted by the incident.

These statistics were reported by the three counties nearest to us:

Broward County reported 8,186 burglaries, down from 8,813.

In Miami-Dade County, burglaries dropped to 11,628 from 11,774.

Palm Beach County had the biggest drop in South Florida, to 6,033 from 7,770.

6 Things You Can Do to Secure Your Home:

Experts advise that taking these essential measures are the best practice to deter crime and secure home self-defense.

1. Make sure all your doors and windows have a locking system.
2. Install thick, solid doors that would be hard to kick in and implement additional bracing from the inside. If your door has a window, install a secondary floor lock that would be beyond the reach of someone breaking and reaching through the door window.
3. Install an alarm system. If you want to see the latest reviews and highest recommendations for in-home security system companies, check out this report from Consumer Affairs.
4. Install security cameras and motion-activated lights
5. Install a fireproof safe to house your valuables that can be bolted to the floor so that it can’t be easily picked up and carried out.
6. Organize a Neighborhood Watch in your community. This is a national organization that provides an opportunity for your neighborhood to become pro-active in home security and interfaces with your local law enforcement agency.

To be sure your Homeowner’s Insurance adequately covers the value of your personal property, give us a call at Pallant / NSi Insurance Group.