After a Break-In: The First 24 Hours

Before you touch anything

• •If there is any chance somebody is still inside, do not go in. Call 000.
• •Report it to the police and get the report number. Insurers ask for it and it is far easier to get now than later.
• •Photograph the damage before anything is moved or cleaned — the entry point, the door, the frame, the room.
• •Try not to handle the entry point itself.
• •Then start on securing it.

Secure tonight, repair properly after

These are two different jobs and conflating them costs you time. Getting the property secure — a temporary board-up, a replaced cylinder, a door that closes and locks — can almost always happen the same day.

A full repair sometimes cannot, because a split jamb or a damaged door needs materials that are not on a van. A locksmith who tells you the frame timber arrives Thursday and secures the opening properly in the meantime is doing the job correctly.

Why every lock gets rekeyed, not just the broken one

This is the step people decline and later regret. You know which door was forced. You do not know what was taken from inside — and spare keys, car keys and keyrings are small, valuable and easy to pocket.

If a spare house key left with the laptop, the lock you just repaired is the least of it. Rekeying every cylinder resets the whole property, and it is a much smaller job than the repair you are already having done.

Look at how they actually got in

The entry point is information. A forced front door says something different from a jemmied rear window, a laneway gate that was never locked, or a sliding door lifted off its track.

Fixing only what broke leaves the same route open. The useful version of this visit is a repair plus an honest look at the point of entry — and often the cheap fix is not another lock, it is a window restrictor, a bolt on a gate, or a light.

For the insurer

Ask for an itemised report of what was damaged and what was repaired, with photographs, when you book — not afterwards. Documenting as the work happens is straightforward; reconstructing it a week later is not, and the difference shows in a claim.

One thing worth saying plainly

A break-in is not only a property problem. Feeling unsafe in your own home afterwards is an extremely common reaction and it does not track the value of what was taken. If the security work helps with that, it is worth doing for that reason alone — and there is no need to justify wanting the locks changed on a door that was not damaged.