Be Well: How to Protect Your Home From Burglars 

<div class="block">Joe Mazza, HGTV&#39;s home inspector, joined Cheddar News to talk about ways people can protect their homes from burglaries. He shares a few tips that might typically be easily glossed over by homeowners.</div>

beWell

Home inspector Joe, every 15 seconds a home is burglarized in the US. So, what can we do to keep our home safe? Especially while we're on vacation. Well, first of all, every 15 seconds, that's a lot. That's actually scary. That's actually scary. So, in this interview here the house is getting robbed it multiple times. What can you do? Well, let's start with something that is very easy, but it's overlooked. A lot of times lock your windows, you know, it, it's not hard to do that, but lock your windows. Right. You probably close your blinds too. Right? People aren't looking in and saying no, nobody's home because I'm sure they're staking out a lot of this home to make sure people are gone all the time. Like the movie home alone. What did they do there? Stalked out the house and neighborhood. Yeah, everyone has a door in their house. Make sure everything is locked and probably both locks too. Not just one right top to bottom, bottom. If you have a storm door, lock the storm door, you know, lock everything up. You, you're, you're leaving, you're not gonna be home. They say the harder you make it for a burglar, then the harder they will be for them to actually come in and take it. So, if your storm door is locked, then they're like, oh, that's one distraction to try to get them away from your house. We're speaking about locking up your home, making sure things are safe. A lot of people have alarms too. Right. Yeah, those really help. Do you think the alarms are, are huge right here? I have one right here. Um, it's got the motion sensors on all the windows in the house. It's got the motion sensors on all the doors in the house even has shatterproof. If somebody breaks the window, sometimes, maybe people want to break the window and slide through it, you break these windows, the alarm goes off. It goes right to the police department. Police department will call me. No, I didn't do it. They're here right away. Now, another thing that I have on my alarm is like the water thing you put by your water heater in case water hits it, then you get an alert too and it goes off because a lot of times if some emerging happen, emergency happens where it's flooded or a toilet and water main, any of that stuff, then it will help with that as well. It does. I actually have three of them. I have one in my laundry room. I have one by my hot water heater, my boiler and by my, my, uh, my main incoming water. What's next? Next, next? Oh, my. Oh, I have another one outside. Ok, let's go outside. Ok. A lot of people are familiar with the ring doorbells. How can that help in this situation? You see everything all the time. You're always on, on, on the, go on, what's happening right now. So, I'm in Florida. I'm over here, I'm in Jamaica on the beach. My ring camera goes off. Hey, it's motion detected or motion detected, the front door or the doorbells ringing. I go on there and I could see, see everything, right, everything in the, everything you see that camera sees and I see on my phone no matter where I am, speaking of deterrence lights can help deter people away as well, right? All the time, all the time. Having it more, the more light you have, the better off it is, you know, houses that are in the complete dark, makes it easier for someone to come and rob it and do what they do what they want to take their time. So, having a timer like this one or my little car, my little light down here, this one is, is a motion sensor and it's also solar powered. So I'm not using any power for it. It operates on its own, you walk within my driveway, that light automatically turns on, you know, and that can make certain people suspect, you know, they get nervous and they'll run away. Yeah. Worst case it'll help them be seen on the camera. The more light the better. Ok, let's go on to another one. Go ahead. I got you. Another great deterrent is having a car in the driveway. You know, even if you, let's say you're taking your car vacation and you don't have another car, maybe your neighbor can park in your driveway while you're away or a family member or, or whatever the case is just keeping a car present. You know, let somebody know, possibly there's, there might be somebody living in the house or somebody home at that given time. And also if your car doesn't drive and you have an automatic garage door opener, take that automatic opener out of your car and leave it in the house because if somebody breaks in your car, they hit the button. Now they're in your house. They have easy access. That's not good. That's great to do any time. Even if you are home, make sure your doors are locked if you keep that in there. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even keep my garage door open in the car. I have the button in the car and you can only use it when the car is on. So you don't have it. That's it. Yep. Pools are always a big safety concern. But how can we make sure that our yard and our pool stay safe while we're going? Number one lock, the gate that's surrounding your pool. Lock that gate number, it better be a self closing gate. But when you leave, lock the gate, that's number one. Number two, you know, they have sensors like I have a sensor for this pool. If somebody jumps in my pool, I put that sensor in, it's gonna go to my phone and it's gonna say, oh, you know, something splashed in your pool, blah, blah, blah, check on it. Um, now if I'm away and I see that on my phone, I have my ring camera right up top there. I already feel safer. I'm ready for vacation. I'm ready to go in that pool right now. Right now before we get too comfortable in the cabana chilling on the beach. You have one more tip for us before going on vacation, one more tip. It's a good one. This is a good one and everyone does this. They don't follow it. They do it, stop doing it, stop doing this. Uh, when you go on vacation, don't say, hey, I'm on vacation. I'm in Florida for the next week and a half. Look at my life. This is what I'm doing. I'm drinking. Don't say that. Just, just don't put anything on social media, take your pictures, come home and then do your posting. But I, I just watch all the time. People like I'm like, wow, no one's home. So any burglar, any person that's hungry needs money or addiction or something they're gonna say. Well, I know that person. I know where they live. Boom. No one's home. Well, yes. Don't tell everyone you're on vacation. Especially whether, you know, it's, it's thousands of miles away and no one's home at your house. That's just, that's a big, big, big, no. No. All right. So now we can toast and enjoy our vacation home. Safe, our home is safe home is safe, drinking the water.