Securing a property – no matter whether it’s your own or rented – is essential. It will keep you feeling safer in your own home and protect your belongings from potential thieves who are looking for any weak point to gain access to your property.
As a tenant, you have a right to feel safe in your new home, even though you don’t own the property. You may feel like you can’t secure the property that you call home without your landlord’s permission, but there are a few ways in which you can help increase the security which don’t necessarily need to go through them as they won’t interfere with the property’s condition.
Research Local Crime Statistics
Securing a property can begin way before you even sign on the dotted line of the tenancy agreement.
Take it upon yourself to look at the crime stats for the area that you are looking to move to and see what sort of crime is occurring in that area. This will give you some indication of how secure the area is, and may help you decide on whether the area is somewhere that you would like to live.
Talk to your potential landlord and ask what they think of the area and ask them to tell you about any issues that they have encountered while renting the property that you are looking at. It’s also a good idea to ask the local police for their input too to give an accurate picture of the area you are looking to call home.
Install New Locks
When moving into a new home –rented or otherwise – it’s important to make sure that one of the first jobs that you do is change the locks.
However, in a rented property, this isn’t just as simple as installing your own locks – you will need to ask the landlord to change them for you. Although they may insist that they have changed the locks, some landlords simply rotate the locks after each tenant moves out, meaning that there could still be someone who used to live in your property with a key which will give them access.
Ask them to completely replace the locks with brand new ones to reduce the chance of anyone having access to your property – you never know who lived there previously or how many keys they had cut.
Bolster Any Sliding Exterior Door
If you have a sliding door that gives outside access to your home, it’s important to add extra security in the form of a pole or a block of wood positioned in the track to reduce the chance of any unauthorised access to your property.
Some sliding doors have locks which can easily be picked, or tracks which can be jolted and knocked out of place, giving intruders a quick and easy access to your home. Having this extra layer of security will make it more difficult for them to open the door – even if you have locked it, too!
You need to make sure that you’re feeling safe and secure in your property; it is your home after all. If you’d like some help and advice on finding the perfect property to rent in Sutton Coldfield, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today and we’ll be more than happy to help you out.
