Burglary

[ctc]

We have a second home in France, located near to Parthenay (Dept 79).  We have unfortunately been advised by our friends that our house was broken into this weekend. We are very upset to hear this news and are not able to get over to the property until middle of this week.  Our insurance company will not pay to have new locks on our home (even though keys have gone missing).  Has anyone else had this experience with burglarys/insurance claims and has any tips on keeping the property safe.  Thanks.

[Jon 1]

Suggest you install a telephone autodialler that will dial different numbers of your choice should there be entry to your property.  You can programme numbers for your home, office, mobile friends, and neighbours.  It will dial each one in succcession to provide an alert.  There are cheap to expensive systems.  You can totally automate your home so that lights go on at random and curtains are opened and closed etc.  Some systems can even photo intruders and transmit them to your pc.  You can disarm the alarm remotely, also listen into your home to determine whether it is a false alarm.  Some systems can be wireless/no wire and run on battery/solar power should you wish to switch off the power supply on departure.

Jon

[Nick Trollope]

Jon's idea is an excellent one, and useful for catching criminals. However, catching criminals is the work of the Police, discouraging them from breaking into your property is the best defence;

a) If you can't live there make sure that you leave nothing of any value in the house. Make it obvious that there is nothing there (leave the TV stand with the leads, lock the TV in the cellar etc etc). Don't close the curtains. Any burglar will "case" a property before he breaks in, make it not worth his while.

b) Secure the property properly. Don't use "Yale" type locks - they can be opened in a few seconds by an amateur or less with a boot. Use 2 good 5 (or ideally 7) lever locks on all external doors, which must also be up to the job. Lock windows. Ensure that there is no access to 1st floor windows and balconies.

etc etc

Remember that any burglar will go for the softest target - make sure that it is your neighbours!

 

 

[Alcazar]

We have three external doors to our property, and have invested in metal "Persienne" (sp?) shutters for each, two of which can only be opened from the inside, and none can be easily kicked in. The lock on the sole set to be locked from outside, is, according to a French friend who is a professional safe breaker, (yes, really! ), a good one.

Alcazar

[Dick Smith]

"according to a French friend who is a professional safe breaker"

Now that's what I CALL integrating with the local community...

[Alcazar]

That's what WE thought when we met him at a campsite in the Gorges du Tarn about 12 years ago!

Turns out he works for Fichet-Bauche, the people who break open, repair, fit etc etc safes for anyone who has lost the key, broken the mechanism etc. Mostly banks.

He once took an old safe out of a property and fitted a new one for the owner. The owner gave him the old safe to do up.........they are worth good money, so a decent perk, and when he opened it there was a diamond ring in it, worth about £600. He returned it to the old guy, who said he'd forgotten about it, and J-P could keep it

Alcazar

[letrangere]

Anyone know how common burglary is in rural areas?  I know in the provencal dept of the Vaucluse with its disproportionately high number of expensive maisons de vacances burglary is reputed to be as common as the worst Paris arrondissements but elsewhere?  We come across it on the Forum from time to time and I recall reading an article years back in LF about a couple near Bergerac who'd been done over so many times they eventually sold up.  There wasn't much left for their last unwanted visitors to pinch so they even stripped the kitchen units and sink.  But I'm sure that's exceptional.  Despite good locks and shutters, if your holiday place is isolated or even in a hamlet with other only seasonally occupied homes, it is a concern.  M

[Roxane]

Sorry to hear you have suffered a break in. We know exactly what it is like - we suffered our 4th one in December and still have no pay out from the insurance company!

Our first 3 were at our house in the Vendee - it was remote, no near neighbours. It was broken into at the same time each year. Till eventually we left nothing there and then sold up - losing money.

Second time around we did everything we thought was right. We bought in a village, now in the Languedoc,  good next door neighbour, no break in's in the village for 4 years. In december - they - took a crow bar (is that how you spell it) and forced the front door. We have a street light outside. Luck was on our side in that they did no damage but we lost over 6000 Euro's worth of stuff. We are still renovating so mostly tools etc. Most electrical stuff was still in boxes so easy to take away.

What else can we do - I object to building Fort Know - its not what I want to be in France for. We are thinking about an alarm, but just at the moment I am also thinking about selling........

Watch this space

Roxane

[Fumanzoku]

I'm in the Vendee too, though there's never been any burglaries in our 'hamlet' as far as I know. I rarely lock the door, close the windows and prefer to leave the garage/workshop open. I suppose I'll get hit one day. I've had many things stolen in my life including my prized £2000 motorcycle which I couldn't insure for theft in Japan. I've been robbed at knife and gun point several times and lost money, rings etc. But I'm still here, healthy and have no scars, and have more property than ever before and I just don't want to worry about these things - life is too short.

Roxane, how about just having fewer things, things you don't care about losing, and anything else keep in a safe room, box or cellar. Must be better than selling up.

[Coco]

Before we lived in our house permanently I used to occasionally worry about it's isolated location with regard to burglary.  However, we didn't have anything worth pinching in it.  The furniture was our older stuff, we didn't have a TV and the hi-fi was our old one too.  It would have been annoying to have had it pinched but I don't think a thief on close inspection would think it worth the effort!  And in fact, although our insurance policy stipulated that we had to have shutters on the property and close them if we were leaving it unattended for more than 48 hours, in the end we chose NOT to close them when we were away.  Our reasoning was very much as someone has already said about closing curtains; if the house were closed up, someone would need to break in to see if there was anything worth taking.  If we left the shutters open they could see that it wasn't worth their while.  And also, that due to our isolated location the shutters weren't much of a deterent anyway - someone could come along and make as much noise as they liked removing them and no one, apart from the cows, would hear.

The land around our house is owned by a man who, at the time, was our maire.  On one visit he commented on the fact that we left our shutters open and I thought we were about to get told off.  Quite the reverse in fact.  He made the point that by leaving the shutters open it would appear as though there was someone in residence, and the thieves would go and find one of the other shuttered holiday homes in the area to attack!

So, I think the advice about leaving curtains/shutters open but hiding anything of value out of sight is a good solution, other than of course, police-linked alarm systems.