Protect your home when you’re away: House Sit Match a beginner’s checklist

Are you planning on taking an extended trip? Do you have a lovely holiday home that remains empty part of the time? Or are in the process of relocating from one country to another either to Spain or back to the UK? All of these exciting journeys can leave your home empty, and potentially they also leave your house vulnerable.

Holiday homes can easily fall prey to opportunist prowlers if not occupied

Double locking all the doors and windows might at first seem a one-step no brainer to securing your home when you are away. But is this really all you can do?

What steps can you take before your trip or holiday?

1.    Cancel any parcels, regular post, and deliveries alike newspapers - Anyone can look through your letterbox and see the carpet of letters and promotional mailings littering the floor. As it’s unlikely that you’re using them as a decorative feature in your hallway, they act as a clear sign that you’re not at home. 

2.    Make sure your most treasured valuables, including photographs, jewellery, and expensive gadgets, are discreetly put away - If they’re not immediately obvious through the window, the temptation posed to potential intruders is likely to be less.  

3.    Remove your spare key from its usual convenient hiding place –

Wherever you’ve hidden it, believe me when I say, it’s not subtle. Under the doormat, in the porch or under a rock, these are the first places anyone would look if they were trying to access your home. Giving it to a friend is a good call as in case of an emergency, at least someone trusted will still be able to access the home.

4.    Turn your lights off, or should you keep them on? - New technology allows you to compromise. You can easily buy electronic timers which you can personally programme to turn lights on at night, for example. These can be bought relatively inexpensively and are a worthwhile small investment in increasing home security. 

5.    Find a housesitter or housesitting couple to occupy your home while you are away - you can find an experienced and trustworthy housesitter online via platforms like HouseSitMatch.com A good housesitting platform will display the profiles of the sitters, if they are police checked, reviews and they will allow you to select from portfolio of housesitters on the site. Many of the sitters are retired couples who find housesitting to be a great way to travel on a fixed budget. All you have to do is register as a home owner and pay a small annual membership fee, the housesitters come for free. They exchange their experience in pet and home care for free accommodation in the period you are offering in the ‘housesit assignment’. There is also online help via Livechat to make sure you get all the support you need. HouseSitMatch is an award winning website (2016 The Guardian Small Business Network) and their reviews are on Trustpilot.

Many housesitters are retired professionals housesitting to travel on a fixed budget

6.    Avoid publicising your trip until after your return - This is a relatively new issue to think about. It’s so easy to forget in the world of social media that it’s not only your nearest and dearest who can see your public profiles. If your privacy settings aren’t tightly controlled, it is very easy for anyone to go onto your profile and find out where you live. Your smug Facebook status about getting away from it all acts is a permanent advert that your house is almost certainly empty. Maybe save the celebrating until you’re back…

What can you have in place at home during your trip?

Clearly one of the best ways to protect your home is to give it the appearance of being lived in and there are three key ways to achieve this. .

1.    Enlist the help of neighbours -

If you’re part of a close-knit community, one good option is to ask your neighbours for a helping hand. This can include anything from watering plants, taking out the dustbins, and making sure a light is kept on. This is particularly handy during the winter months. Another thing to double check is that you haven’t ordered any deliveries whilst you’re away, as if they are left outside your house for an extended period of time, it’s obvious that there’s no one to collect them. However this doesn’t always offer the perfect solution, particularly if your neighbours are away themselves, are elderly and find movement tricky, or if you live in a more remote location.

2.    Have someone to stay - friend or house sitter -

Home insurance typically becomes invalid once your home has been unoccupied for more than a month  so it’s important to find a solution. Having somebody to live in the house whilst you’re away is another option to having a kind neighbour or family member to pop in on an adhoc basis or casual arrangement. Housesitters, provided by online companies such as HouseSitMatch.com (link: www.housesitmatch.com), provide a safe alternative. Not only can they take care of all the pre-trip hassle, such as turning lights on/off, taking bins out etc, they can offer in-house pet care if you have animals which need to be looked after. Housesitting offers a two-in-one combo which cuts costs and makes your trip away a lot more affordable. I own a labrador who is friendly to everybody she meets and is therefore a pretty rubbish layer of protection. However, by keeping your faithful guard-dog within your home, it does add that extra layer of security.

3.    Keep your pets at home with a pet sitter

Some housesitters are pet professionals who housesit for a change of scene

If you usually keep your pets at the property then the best thing is to leave the pets in their own home with a pet sitter. The property will be occupied as usual, and their presence alone will deter most burglars or opportunist prowlers.  Pet sitters with experience are also a great way to make sure your home is safely occupied, and more especially your pets retain their usual routines and any chance of separation anxiety is minimised. What’s more if you make arrangements early the pet sitters for free by offering your home as a ‘housesit’ on HouseSitMatch.com  and formalising the arrangement through use of a housesitting agreement to agree terms of the arrangement.

An Englishman’s home is his castle. Bearing this in mind, before your next adventure, it is truly worth using at least some of these tips and taking a few minutes to fortify it!