Home insecurity - nearly 1 in 5 Americans has experienced a home burglary - key takeaways:
Bottom Line: There are few things that can lead to a greater since of insecurity than having your home compromised by thieves. My frame of reference is only that of having my business burglarized (multiple times years ago) but since suffering from PTSD anytime I received a nighttime call for about a decade after the second time it occurred. I thankfully can't imagine what it's like at home. Unfortunately, way too many people do according to the research just conducted by OOMA.com's home security report. Here were key stats:
16% of Americans have been victims of home burglary
22% of the cases are crimes of opportunity
In the crimes of opportunity category - 14% of robbers came through an unlocked door & 8% came through an open/unlocked window. That's a good place to start with easily improving your home security. Especially since they found that 60% of us leave doors at least occasionally unlocked when we're not home and 42% occasionally leave windows open/unlocked while away. Especially if it's not on the ground floor. In fact, the only single risk factor greater than those two easily addressed issues is the neighborhood you live in.
Other interesting info in the research...37% of homes now have some type of a home security system. That's up from 17% about five years ago. The most recent research shows that homes with a security system are 60% less likely to be targeted by thieves. So, think about this for a moment...If more than one in three homes now has a security system and thieves are much less likely to target them and naturally pursue soft targets first... You can piece this together and figure out that it's becoming far more dangerous to not engage in the safest possible practices.