How To Secure Vacant Rental Property (3 Simple Steps)

Hey, in today's video, I'm going to show you how I secure and protect my vacant flips and rental properties in three simple steps. Hey, if you're new here, welcome to my channel. My name is Jason. I'm a realtor and investor outside of Columbus, Ohio. I've been doing it for over seven years. I've flipped a lot of homes and I own a lot of rental properties, and I've made a lot of mistakes when it comes to leaving them vacant. So in today's video, I'm going to share some of the mistakes of what doesn't work and what does work. Let's get to step number one. All right, step number one is simple. It's lighting. A lot of people miss this. Now, if you don't have any electricity on at the house, like let's say you're in the process of actually renovating the property and the electric's not on, you can't use normal lights. Obviously, they're not going to work. So what do I use? So I use these solar lights. These are awesome. The reason why I like these solar lights is they require no electricity, right? And they're really inexpensive. You can buy four, five units on Amazon for like $100 and don't cheap out. Don't get the tiny ones. Get the big ones like I have back here because it's worth the money and it's motion censored. So when someone walks by at night, it kicks on. Again, lighting is super important and a lot of people miss it. They'll just ignore the fact that there's no outside lighting. And if you drive by houses in the middle of the night, you'd be shocked how many people have no exterior lighting at all. It's a basic step you can take to keep your property secure and you want multiple points of light. You don't want just one or two lights. That's not going to do it. You need a lot of them. On a house like this, I probably have three or four exterior lights that are solar alone. So then when you get electricity all hooked up, put in real lights. That's right. Lights that are photo cell sensitive, meaning that the fixture actually has a photo cell on it and you can buy these on Amazon. You can get them from Lowe's. You can probably even get them from eBay if you wanted to and put a nice bright LED bulb in there. That way at nighttime, as long as the switch is on, that light in the backyard automatically comes on and it's not going to cost you that much money. I'd rather spend an extra $20, $30, $40 a month in electricity if I have to on my vacant flip and make sure the place is lit up like a Christmas tree. And you can see back here on this stairway, I've got one too, right? So I have one on every corner of the house. That's super important. So lighting is my first step. Got to have the place lit up. All right. So my second way of protecting a property is with a simple security camera system. And this one by Reolink is awesome. It has a solar panel, so it powers it and it doesn't need wifi. You can just use a cellular network and this one runs on T-Mobile, but it rotates 360 degrees and you can use your phone app to actually rotate it, control it, record. You can even hear audio. It'll automatically record when somebody walks by and trips it. It's pretty awesome. Easy to install. You can buy them for like $150 on eBay used. So the other part of the security camera that's super important is a sign like this. And this sign basically says, Hey punks, watch out. I've got a security system here. I've got cameras. Don't mess with my property. Now you may think a sign Jason, is that really going to work? It's a combination type thing. If somebody looks at this sign and then they start looking around and they go, Oh, there's the camera. They can see it. That provides another level of protection. And this thing's only like 20 bucks made of metal and it's reusable. So if you go to another property and flip it or you go to another vacant rental that you're working on, you can easily stick this sign in the yard. Life's good. All right. So the third simple step you should take to protect your vacant rental or flip is with an easy to use security system that doesn't require a phone line or a wifi system. Check this out. So when I walk in the house, it has a motion sensor. When I walk in, it's going to immediately pick me up and it's going to start counting down. There's a system right there. Pretty easy, right? Just a motion sensor. You got the keypad and you got the alarm. Now it's not connected to the police, but it causes them big enough ruckus that it scares a lot of people away. And you can buy them on eBay for like next to nothing. This one's made by SimpliSafe, but it's going to count down. Listen to how loud it is. Yikes. Pretty cool. Pretty cool, right? So that's another way that you can protect your property in an easy to use fashion. And you can also buy those little, the little motion sensors. You can buy a lot of them. They're inexpensive. I think they're like $20 typically. And you can put them all around the house if you wanted to. You may get some false alarms, but that's much better than having somebody break into your house. And then to arm it, all you got to do is just hit away. Not a big deal at all. As we leave, I'll show you what does not work. So a lot of people just think a lock will work, right? Just like a simple door lock. But you got to have a deadbolt. It goes without saying. But just a lock on your door is not going to protect your property. It's just not going to because people will scout out your property and they'll find out, hey, when does that guy come and go? I'm going to jump in there. Maybe take some wiring. Maybe just mess with the house. Maybe squat. Maybe take some tools. You just don't know. So you got to protect your house. And here's the other thing. I see people put blinds up and they cover the windows when they're doing flips because they think, hey, if people can't see inside, well, they're not going to mess with it. Wrong. I've had a lot of flips and vacant rental properties broken into when there were blinds on the windows. And what I discovered was people liked it when there were blinds on the windows to break in because nobody could see them inside doing their monkey business. So that doesn't work. Oh, and I forgot another thing. If you have your alarm connected to a police station, I've done that before. Doesn't help either because by the time the cops come, the people are out of here. Having a security camera, good lighting, and something to scare them off with the alarm, the audible alarm, usually protects my rentals and I haven't had any issues with vacant properties since I implemented these steps. Thanks for joining me today. I appreciate it. Like, subscribe to my channel, all about real estate at the ground level. I'm Jason. I'm out. See ya.