Buying a holiday home here in the UK offers regular holidays for your family and may also be a source of income from holiday home rental. Whether you have a holiday cottage, a static caravan or a log cabin, your holiday home will be a significant investment that you’ll want to protect. Since you’ll be spending more time away from your holiday home than you spend there, it makes sense to invest in some decent security measures to give you peace of mind that you holiday home is protected while you’re away.
In this article we look at some simple ways to boos the security of your holiday home.
Doors and Windows
These are the two obvious weak points in the security of any building that thieves will target when trying to break in.
If your holiday home had a previous owner it is a very good idea to get the locks on it changed. You will have been given keys when you took possession of your holiday home, but you will have no idea how many other sets of keys the previous owners had cut
We spoke to the team at MPL Locksmith Training who told us their tips for changing locks ‘we’d advise that you call in a professional locksmith for lock replacement on a holiday home. Some holiday homes, especially static caravans, use non standard door fittings, so you’ll need to know what sort of lock to fit. Also, when you’re on holiday you’re not going to want to take lots of tools with you – get a locksmith to do the job for you in a fraction of the time it would take you to do it yourself.
Outdoor Security
One of the great things about owning your holiday home is that it means you can leave things like bikes, boats and other items for leisure activities at the holiday home so you don’t have take them with you each time you travel. Obviously such bulky items will need storing away securely outside of your holiday home
Garden storage boxes are a good solution for storing outdoor leisure items securely away. Make sure you choose one with a good locking mechanism fitted, or with a hasp and staple that will allow you to fit a high quality padlock. Garden storage boxes are available at many high street retailers and also online. We found some good examples readily available but due to the physical size of these storage boxes, even when flat-packed we recommend arranging delivery to your holiday home
Holiday Home Management
If you intend to rent out your holiday property, especially if you live a considerable distance away, you might wish to consider using the services of a holiday home management company. A good holiday home company will not only get your holiday home ready for the next guests by changing bedding and ensuring it is clean and tidy, they will also monitory the security of the holiday home
It is good practice to provide you holiday home management company with an inventory of all items that should be in the holiday property and they will check these items to ensure that they are there at the end of a letting
There are many holiday home management companies operating in the UK, usually focused in tourist areas such as Devon and Cornwall. Search for holiday home management in the area of your holiday home, or if you’d just like to check out one such company for an idea of the services they provide, we recommend looking at the website of HHM Property Management, who look after properties in Devon, Somerset and Dorset.
We hope that our article has helped you with some useful pointers for securing your holiday home, especially if you are new to holiday home ownership. If you have some tips for holiday home security, why not leave us a comment and share your tip with other holiday home owners? We’d love to hear from you.
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