It is your responsibility as a landlord to ensure that your renters are safe. Therefore, you should ensure that your property is secured from break-in and burglary free. By doing this, you will keep your tenants for a long period of time because they will have assured security.
Follow these 5 important tips to secure your rental property:
1. Hire a property manager
You need to maintain your property to satisfy your renters and ensure that they stay. To achieve this, you are advised to hire an experienced property manager who can help you by maintaining the location, monitoring the area and screening tenants before they start renting.
A property manager can help you manage your property if you have a full-time job, you live far away from the property or when you have limited time to carry out regular maintenance/upkeep on your property.
2. Secure the main entrances
You should consider installing double-cylinder deadbolts to secure main entrances where burglars prefer breaking through. In addition, if the main entrances are hollow, consider installing wood or metal doors to secure the premises. Finally, whenever a tenant moves or is evicted, make sure that all the keys are returned. In case you did not get all the keys, consider rekeying the locks before the next person moves in.
3. Install a security system
Although installing a security system might be expensive, it is a lifetime investment and you don’t do it all the time. In addition, there are different security system options which you can choose depending on your needs and budget. Nowadays, most security systems are easy to install and are remotely accessible.
This means that you can install them yourself and access security information on your smartphone or your laptop regardless of your location. Furthermore, you can get an insurance for a rental property with ease if you’ve installed a security system.
4. Add external lighting
Adding external lighting near the main entrances, backyard and windows can help deter burglars away. With the current technology, there are motion sensing lights which uses electricity, solar power and even batteries and they can detect movement a dozen feet away in every direction.
Therefore, your external lighting choices can be determined by your budget, your preferred source of energy, availability, installation costs and preference. If you don’t know anything about motion sensor bulbs and their varied options, you can seek help from an expert to make the right choice.
5. Check the security of your windows
To prevent burglars from opening your rental property windows from outside, you should have them fitted with a locking mechanism. However, since a thief can break the glass and unlock the window or climb through it, you can install window sensors that usually sound an alarm whenever the windows are tampered with.
This is an effective method to curb theft especially if you have installed a security system. The system will send a notification to your smartphone/laptop in case someone is tampering with your windows.
It is true that some of the initial cost of these safety tips can be hefty. However, most renters are willing to pay a good amount of money in a rental property where they have guaranteed security. Alternatively, your tenants can contribute some money to facilitate some of these projects/ in return, you can deduct their contributions from their rent for a period of time.