Hey EJ and Airbnb, SafeMart Can Help

It’s been nearly impossible to avoid hearing about the unfortunate situation involving Airbnb and one of its customers–known as EJ through her blog posts.  EJ rented her home using Airbnb’s service and came home to find that the home had been vandalized and she had been robbed of valuables and irreplaceable personal items.

Situations like this get us worked up at SafeMart because this is something that can be prevented and is a major reason why we push LiveWatch Interactive Services and home automation–you should always know what is going on in your home!

In order to illustrate how helpful a system can be in preventing a situation like EJ’s, let’s assume that when you rent your home out, you want to:

1. Store valuables in a particular room or closet;
2. Only provide access to certain rooms;
3. Change the locks after the tenant’s stay; and
4. Maintain the ability to actually see your home during the rental period.

First, you’ll want to add a security system that uses cellular communication and that has interactive services.  This does 2 things:

1. The system cannot be disabled by cutting the phone line (because it doesn’t use a phone line); and
2. Gives you access to your system from anywhere in the world (see the iPhone app interface to the right).

To secure the room where you’re storing your valuables, a door contact that monitors the opening and closing of a door as well as a motion detector that monitors movement will do the trick. You can also monitor the container where you store your valuables by using a wireless door contact and setting your interactive services settings to alert you if the container is opened.

EJ’s biggest concern after the incident was that the keys might have been copied–naturally she was scared that the vandals might return.  Avoid making copies of keys altogether by installing a door handle that works with your security system that doesn’t require a key.  This gives you the ability to lock and unlock the door remotely and will also allow you to give the tenants a passcode rather than a key.  Using SafeMart’s LiveWatch Interactive Services you can delete the passcode remotely after the tenant has left and add a new passcode for the next tenant.

Lastly, if you want the ability to see the inside of your home while you’re renting it, add a wireless IP camera to the system.  Our cameras can be controlled remotely and don’t require a physical connection to the Internet in your home!

Anytime a customer purchases a system after they’ve been burglarized, we feel awful.  While we are always happy to help after the fact, it is even more exciting to prevent issues rather than react to them. If you have people coming into your home, please take the above precautions to make sure that even while you’re not there, you have control over your home.

Sam McBride is focused on business development and operational strategy for Bolster LLC and it’s subsidiaries, which include Able Security and SafeMart (SafeMart.com).