Securing your home before the Melbourne summer

Why now and not December

Two things change over a Melbourne summer. Houses empty out over the holidays, and the weather means windows and doors that stay shut for nine months start being left open. Both are opportunities, and both are entirely predictable — which means they are fixable in September rather than panicked about on the way to the airport.

Locksmiths get busy in the last two weeks of December. Anything that needs parts ordered is much easier to arrange now.

1. The back of the house, not the front

People upgrade the front door because that is the door they look at. Almost nobody comes in that way. The back door, the laundry door, the side gate and the garage personnel door are where the weakness lives, and in a lot of Melbourne housing they still carry whatever the builder fitted.

Walk the perimeter of your own house and be honest about which door you would pick.

2. Windows that actually open

Keyed window locks are cheap, quick to fit and the single most common thing missing from an otherwise decent house. They matter most on ground-floor windows that are not visible from the street — the side return, the bathroom, the window behind the shed.

If you rent, note that working locks or latches on external windows are a rental minimum standard in Victoria, not a favour. There is a full explanation on our guide to locks and renting in Victoria.

3. Sliding doors

A big aluminium slider with a single centre latch is the classic weak point in a bayside or post-war Melbourne house. Keyed patio bolts and secondary sliding-door locks fit to the door you already have, in one visit, and they close the gap properly. A broom handle in the track is better than nothing and worse than a lock.

4. Deadbolts on external doors

A deadlatch that can be slipped is not a deadbolt. Check what you actually have on each external door, and check your insurance wording while you are at it — a lot of Melbourne policies specify keyed deadlocks and a lot of houses quietly do not comply.

5. Keys, and who has them

Before you go away, think about how many keys to your house exist and where they are. Old tenants, the ex-cleaner, the mate who watered the plants in 2019. If you cannot account for them, rekeying the external cylinders kills every one of them without buying new hardware. It is a half-hour job. See rekey or replace.

And do not leave a key under the mat, in the meter box, or in a fake rock. Those hiding places are not a secret to anybody.

6. The theatre list

Things that look like security and mostly are not: a sticker for an alarm you do not have, a light on a timer that switches at exactly 7pm every night, a chain latch on a door with a weak strike plate, and a padlock on a gate you can lift off its hinges. None of them are harmful. None of them are the thing that stops a break-in either.

Before you actually leave

• Stop the mail, or have someone clear it. An overflowing letterbox is the loudest signal there is.
• Lock the internal garage door too, not just the roller door.
• Do not announce the trip on social media until you are home.
• Leave a key with one person you trust, and tell them to actually come inside once.
• Photograph anything valuable. It matters enormously for a claim.