What are the chances of a house burglary while away on holiday, really?

[CottagePieLaLaLa]

This time of year it's not unusual to see articles online with tips on how to make sure your home is safe from intruders while you're off to Cornwall/France/Spain/etc for a week of fun and frolic. Stop your milk delivery, use timers on your lights, get the neighbours to water your plants, etc.

But what are the chances of a house burglary, really? Luckily we've never experienced one and neither have our close friends. But a few of their neighbours have. So I'm now wondering whether it's getting more common and we should really make whatever effort we can, to burglar-proof our homes.

Interested in what other MNters have experienced...

I agree about the paranoia. We were on holiday last year and we have a camera door bell so can see who is at the front door. A young, dodgy looking man knocked on and started looking around the back. He then came back that night. If ruined my holiday because I was panicking the whole time. Our house was fine and it could have been trying to sell something or who knows but since then I'd rather not know when I'm away

Mine don’t wear collars - working Labradors and there are at least two of them - shortly we have be back to having 3. Normally they have friends staying on holiday - currently a large Doberman has joined for 6 weeks. As I previously said I pity the fool that attempts to enter the house - you have zero chance of catching one. They listen to me and the children but no one else. One click of my fingers they lie flat on the floor including heads down but not for a burglar. They have free run of all of the house and gardens - they have a dog flap actually a cat flap they can get in and out of.
We used to have cold callers selling dusters etc when we moved in - not anymore.

How do the burglars find out unless they are your friends?

We were burgled just before Christmas, ironically we were only out for dinner, not away on holiday.

We have monitored CCTV (linked to the police station), CCTV, lights left on and cars on the drive. My lesson learnt was that you're only as good as your neighbour's security (mine had gone away and left ladders out).

Also if you have a burglar alarm, think about upstairs. Most of our local burglaries are via the first floor as there's typically fewer sensors upstairs. They broke a window in my bathroom and had unlimited time in my bedroom until they triggered the alarm going onto the landing. I've since put a sensor and window alarm in my bedroom.

They stole all my Christmas presents from under the tree and a lot of sentimental jewellery. But not my rings as they're in an innocuous looking food storage jar in the kitchen.

The police were brilliant, waited for us to get home from London, brought sniffer dogs and a forensic team the next day. But I think it's almost impossible to stop them if they know what they're doing (ironically they didn't burgle my neighbour's house).

Years ago someone I knew loudly recited in a local crowded bar the names of her friends and when they’d be in holiday. She argued she’d not done anything unwise.
After that I always gave her false information.
My PiL were burgled - they’d cancelled newspapers and put the Doberman in kennels. We did wonder if it was a similar case to the milkman’s delivery boy cited above.

The only people I know who have been burgled were all in the house at the time. Most were asleep upstairs, although one was in a back room and someone climbed through the front window and stole a laptop in the middle of the day.

This happened to my SIL (who is Asian). Masked men burst into the house, pushed grandma & kids into the back room and then took her jewellery box. Her road is definitely being watched though. Her car got stolen while she walked inside with a shopping bag, leaving it unlocked for a moment.

When I was a teenager our house was burlged whilst on holiday. We had someone popping in every other day but the police said they suspected the house was being watched and they knew it was empty.

If you have a private FB account with your friends being actual real life family and friends then the risk from this is fairly low. Little different to telling family and friends that you're going away.

Obviously a public account or having tons of random strangers as your 'friends' will be different though.

We have a ring doorbell and a burglar alarm, and we also have window locks. Alarm and doorbell are linked to our phones. I can also control some of our lights from my phone and set them to come on in an evening when dark for a while.

Though to fair the last time we were broken into, and the attempted one not long after, we were in and it was at night. They wanted the keys for dh's car - he had some high powered hatchback thing at the time. So, not having a car in the drive and not being home would have been more likely to have prevented those ones.

Does having shit old cars help? 🤣

We are quite overlooked (street of semis but close together and close to the road), I think that helps more than anything. We also have a security light that triggers when walking up the driveway. No rear access to our garden.

We block our nicer family car (with keyless entry) in with my old manky car as keyless entry car theft is rife in my city (although usually to order).

We don't have an alarm or cameras. We are looking at smart lights though.

We've only had our garden broken into (at our previous house) and it was mostly because we were away (no car on the drive) and our driveway was hidden down the side of our house and completely out of view. They actually didn't steal anything as we had nothing in our garden (but I wonder if they saw the stuff via the Google satellite view that belonged to the previous owner?)

How do the burglars find out unless they are your friends?

Not sure if this is serious question but professional burglars watch groups of houses of periods of time so that they know the routine of the people who live there and who they are.

vulnerable elderly lady in all the time. rumoured to have cash under the matress.
young couple both out for work by 9am don't come back til 6 except on a wednesday when not back til 8
unemployed man built like a linebacker in all day.
single male banker type with a sharp suit out at 6am back at 7pm. owns a ferrari.

who should we burgle and when?

My parents went away for a long weekend - asked both their next-door-neighbors to keep an eye on the house while they were gone.

The neighbor kid & his friends robbed my parents house of about $7500+ worth of jewelry, timepieces & electronics, the little thieves. Doors were bashed in, pillowcases were missing - a real “smash & grab” job.
The items were never recovered.

Can’t say I’d recommend telling the neighbors you’ll be vacating your home for three days.

The kid is now approaching his 30s and is currently in prison for drug & firearm convictions.

If you post you are away on social media that's probably the biggest risk. It's most likely someone you know, or used to know, who will take note of an empty house I'd say.

I think you need new friends

Can’t say I’d recommend telling the neighbors you’ll be vacating your home for three days.

That's absolutely shocking what happened to your parents!

I can hand on heart say that my neighbours wouldn't do anything like that. For one thing the kids are all under ten at present! But we all do each others bins when we go on holiday etc.

We used to live on a new build estate that was clearly seen as an easy target for burglars. About 25 houses over the course of 3 months got broken into via the back patio doors (design flaw - the burglars realised you could remove the glass frames👍🏼)
Most of these break ins happened during the day when hard working people were at work and these lazy scum buckets knew this.
It was a group of 4/5 men.
They only stopped once almost every house installed ring alarms/other alarm systems.
Some people invested in shutters too.

We invested in a ring alarm which is great.
Whenever we went away, we would have a couple of lights come on at random times
(rather then bang on 11pm or 2am) using a timer.

We have someone staying to look after the dogs when we go away without them.
We also have a house alarm, a garage alarm because we have motorcycles which we also chain together, cameras, security gate at the front with a prickly hedge growing alongside it, another metal side gate with lock which leads to the front door, a crunchy gravel driveway, it's pretty inaccessible round the back.
If they do get in our important documents, jewelry etc are in a safe bolted to the floor in a locked cupboard with those anti theft screws. Our vehicle keys are in a key safe in there. Our windows and door locks are new. We do set a light on a timer when we go away in winter.

I really don't think any of my family or friends are likely to break into my house when I'm on holiday!

I really don't think any of my family or friends are likely to break into my house when I'm on holiday!

Don't be naive. Even if that's true, friends and relatives of those you know may have access to their account, people leave themselves logged in. (See @DreamTheMoors post above about the neighbour's son robbing her parents blind).

Even if you have locked down privacy, if you've posted that you are going away, someone with an open account may say something like very jealous of X going to the Maldives next week. wish I was.

My mum has had two burglaries, one about 30 years ago during a family holiday and one (cruelly) during DF’s last illness. We also had a car theft straight off the driveway when I was still only about 20. (Interestingly the car had just been serviced and my DM reckons it was an inside job). My gran was even less lucky. Her ground floor London flat was turned over semi-regularly (including one time she was actually in), but she couldn’t get her head round burglar alarms and wouldn’t spend money on proper window locks. Or proper windows, come to that.

@SirQuintusAureliusMaximus

Even if you have locked down privacy, if you've posted that you are going away, someone with an open account may say something like very jealous of X going to the Maldives next week. wish I was.

How is this person going to know where you live and that everyone in the house is going away?

How is this person going to know where you live and that everyone in the house is going away?

It depends doesn't it? In some cases it's easy to find that out. In some cases it's harder. In probably about 75% of cases, if you know how to go about it, you can find out where someone lives - even if not exactly the number of the house/the street/rough location.

It depends on factors like

how active members of a family (including children) are on all forms of social media and how open their profiles are. Even people who have closed profiles sometimes openly state their area.

Whether people have unusual names or factors that allow identification easily
John Smith in Birmingham will be harder to find than John Smith in Lower Midsummer Worthy who will both be harder to find than Petunia Biggerstaff-Coutts.

Whether anyone in the family are or have even been company directors and have their home address either currently or historically as their correspondence address (surprising how common this is).

whether people are on 192 or have unsubscribed from the open register.

There are also lots of tangential routes in as well. Facebook requires a user to have a public profile photo. Often people close to the user will have Liked the photo. So then you can access the profiles of people they know. Often someone like a best friend or a close relative will have an open profile with pictures of the person of interest and you can get info that way.

Basically if you want to and have got half an hour or so, you can find a lot of information about people. I only know most of this stuff because I know people who do it for work (like tracking down whether a benefit claimant is in fact working or on a luxury holiday investigation type stuff). If you are a criminal, I'm sure there are a lot of other easier routes in and known tricks of the trade.

This this this.

I’m on a fb destination group. people are constantly posting “anyone else flying x date” or doing countdowns. One hotel page even has a list of dates families are staying.

for interest I took the last two of these posts and within seconds had their home address, and a floor plan courtesy of a property site.

kept going and I think only one out of 10 had their fb privacy locked down enough that I couldn’t find their address.