Every year in the United States, approximately 2,500,000 burglaries are committed. Around 66% of these burglaries are home break-ins. In other words, if you have a home, you need to prioritize its security. 

The question is this: how do you prevent home break-ins? Are there measures you can take to keep the thieves away?

The short answer is yes. The long answer will be reviewed below. Without further ado, here are 10 steps to protect your home and prevent break-ins. 

How to Prevent Break-Ins

While there’s no failsafe way of preventing break-ins, there are methods that will make your home less attractive to intruders. To prevent home intrusions, you should do the following. 

1. Keep the Shrubbery Trimmed

The fact of the matter is the more visible your home is, the harder it’s going to be for thieves to break into. What this means is that you need to keep the potential hiding places to a minimum. While there are a number of places on a property in which an intruder might hide, one of the most common places is in the bushes.

Now, you don’t have to get rid of your bushes entirely. In fact, they can be useful in providing your home with security. However, if you’re going to have bushes on your property, you’ll need to keep them trimmed.

Trimming your bushes on a regular basis makes it very difficult for intruders to successfully hide behind them. This, in turn, makes it more difficult for intruders to break into your house. 

2. Keep the Trees Pruned 

The vast majority of the time, when a burglar makes his or her way into a home, he or she does so through a door or window on the ground floor. However, this is not always the case. In some cases, dedicated thieves will scale trees and make their way into homes through second-level windows. 

To prevent this from happening at your house, you must prune tree branches at an unreachable distance from your upper-level windows.

3. Install Motion Sensor Lighting 

There is plenty of security equipment available to help stave off intruders. Motion sensor lighting is just one piece of security equipment that you can use to do this. 

You can buy a motion sensor light for $50 to $100. While you should probably call an electrician to install it for you, you might be able to install it on your own.

4. Ensure the Security of Your Fence Gates 

When it comes to keeping out intruders, every line of security is important. In other words, when sleeping at night or going out of town, you not only need to ensure that your doors are locked, but that your fence gates are secured as well. 

If need be, you can even padlock your gate. This will make it essentially impenetrable to outsiders. 

5. Keep Expensive Possessions out of Sight

Burglars tend to target homes that contain expensive possessions. If they don’t think that a specific home will contain any expensive possessions, they likely won’t try to break into it. 

This is why you need to keep your expensive possessions hidden from public sight as much as possible. Keep your garage door closed, keep toys off of your lawn, and, if possible, put a fence around your yard. 

6. Cover Your Windows 

Some thieves will skip from home to home, looking into windows to see what they contain. If they see something that they think they can steal, they might come back later and try to break in. 

Fortunately, there is a way to counteract this: cover your windows. Place blinds, drapes, or tinted window covers over your windows so they can’t be peered through from the outside. 

7. Lock All Your Windows and Doors  

Thieves don’t need much to break into a house. Just one unsecured entry point is enough for them to make their way in and have their pick of the place. 

For this reason, before going to sleep or leaving your house, you need to ensure all of its entry points are secured. Check the locks on your doors, the latches on your windows, and the security mechanisms on all the rest of your home’s entry points. 

8. Install a Security System 

If you’ve already experienced a break-in, you really need to take home security seriously. Perhaps the most important thing to do after a home break-in is to install a security system. 

While security systems can be a little expensive initially, they usually pay themselves off in the long-run. After all, you can’t really put a price on home security. 

9. Turn on Lights While out of Town 

Perhaps the best way to stave off thieves is by making them think you’re at home, even when you’re not. There are a few different ways to do this, but perhaps the best way is by keeping your lights on. 

While you could just leave your lights on for the entirety of your time spent out of town, the ideal option is to use an automatic light timer. 

10. Leave Town Quietly 

There’s no better time for a thief to steal from a person’s home than when the residents of that home are out of town. What this means is that, when going out of town, you want to keep your departure as secret as possible. If thieves don’t know that you’re out of town, they won’t even think about breaking into your home. 

Don’t post about your departure on social media or in any other public forum. Only tell close friends and relatives you’re leaving. 

Looking for More Home Improvement Tips?

Do you fear someone unlawfully making their way into your home? If so, utilizing the above-reviewed tips should help you to prevent break-ins. 

Looking for more home improvement tips? If so, you can find them right here at Lateet. We have tips on a wide range of topics, including but not limited to home decor, home automation, home security, and more. 

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