Home security is one of the best ways to increase the value of your home while also having its own practical benefits. A burglary happens every 30 seconds in the United States. While you might expect these to primarily take place in the inner city, they happen more in the suburbs.

Family homes are exactly the kind of homes that burglars find most appealing to break into exactly because people think of them as unassailably safe. No home is perfectly secure though.

But at the same time, it is important to remember that you are not looking to be perfectly secure. You just need your home to be secure enough that a thief knows that it is not worth the trouble. How do you do that? Well, there are 5 home security essentials that can help with that task.

1. 1. An Alarm System

Most people will be told they need an alarm system and register it as a recommendation. No. It is a requirement. If you want your home to be secure, it all starts with a responsive alarm system. Ideally this alarm system uses motion sensors to track the opening of the entrances.

This will mean they are primarily concerned with the front and back doors. It should also either call the police or sound an audible alarm. You can usually choose which one it does, but the best choice is to choose both. If it’s not audible, it won’t scare criminals away.

1. 2. Additional Motion Sensors

We are counting these as separate from the alarm system they are meant to support. Why? Because most alarm systems only come with one for the front door and one for the back door. In order to protect all the other entrances, you will need to establish your own motion sensors.

That means giving coverage to the windows and possibly the areas outside your home. Be sure to cover the garage as well. Many people forget about the garage. In fact, many security systems make the same assumption people do: That the garage is hard to break into.

It’s not, and burglars know it. So, be sure to keep it covered.

1. 3. Smart Locks

When a burglar wants to get into a home, they usually don’t show up with a sophisticated plan. What they usually do is walk up to a door in a random neighborhood and try to open it. If it is locked, they move on. But if it is not locked, then they go in and rob it.

This means that the most effective way to deny a burglar entry into your home is to just lock the door, right? It is at least a good first step. But what if you forget to lock your door?

Smart locks do two things: First, they make sure that your door is locked when you are away by locking automatically after a set amount of time. And second, they can detect if someone is trying to force entry into your home. If the lock breaks or is picked, they can detect that.

The fancier smart locks can go even one step further. Locks are, generally speaking, mechanical. They prevent a door from being opened by preventing the knob from being turned.

But with an electronic lock you can use “magnetic current” locks. Rather than just using a mechanism to keep the door closed, they will use electrically charged metal to hold the door closed with magnetism. This is far harder to force open, almost being impossible to force.

Granted, deadbolt locks solve the same problem. But deadbolt locks have the drawback of not being capable of integrating smart locks. This is how you get that deadbolt seal security at the same time as a smart lock.

1. 4. An App to Connect it All

Chances are that you have a lot of questions. How do you turn off an alarm? How do you unlock a smart lock if you left your keys inside? How do you connect motion sensors to an alarm?

All of these can have different answers. But if you want your home security system to be well-integrated and easy to control, then it is much easier on you if they have the same answer: An app. An app on your phone can easily control all of these devices.

But not only that, it can also deliver you alerts as to how they are functioning. It can tell you when an alarm is tripped, when a lock is unlocked, or when a window is broken. You can even respond to these. If you are the one tripping the alarm, you can disable it from the app.

1. 5. Security Cameras

A brief disclaimer: Security cameras do not work how you probably think they work. They are not there to simply record every movement that takes place in front of them. When you get a security camera, it should be connected to the app we mentioned and the motion sensors.

That way it can turn on when it needs to and broadcast a live feed of who is near or inside your home straight to your phone. This can allow you to verify who is tripping your alarm and how. 

Conclusion

Setting up your home to be secure offers you two advantages. The first one is obvious in that it makes your home far safer against the people that would break into it and steal things. The right security measures can also make it so those people get caught, which is uncommon.

In addition to that, however, home security systems are also known to increase the value of homes substantially. Especially smart security systems, as they can serve as the core of a smart home setup in general. This can make your home far more valuable to sell.

Remember, the best part of these security systems is that they do not have to be absolute. You are not prepping for doomsday here. You are just trying to scare off some crooks. If you want some tips on what you should set up or how you can do it, visit us at https://smiththompson.com/