Tiny House Stolen!

It’s a nightmare that you’d never want to have happen, but as tiny houses grow, so will the number of them that are stolen.  Watch this video below:

 

Luckily she was able to find the house, but I thought I’d share a few tips to keep your house safe.  There are a few steps to keeping things safe.  Obscurity, Security and Insurance.

Obscurity

Most of the people who have had their tiny houses stolen have one thing in common, they were in plain sight of a road.  Most criminals are crimes of opportunity. This isn’t some Ocean’s 11 heist; they see the house and they grab it.  It’s important to note that obscurity doesn’t equal security, but if someone isn’t able to see it from the road, if it’s existence isn’t known to many, the likelihood of someone stealing it is much lower.

My recommendation is to always have your house hidden from sight.  This causes less issues with neighbors, less issues with the city and less people poking around in general.  Practically speaking, if you house is visible from the road, you’re going to have people who literally stop their car and peer in your windows, not a great thing when you’re stepping out of the shower!

Don’t forget that while your house might not be seen in the summer months, but when the seasons change, all the leaves will drop.  I often suggest budgeting a few hundred dollars for some evergreen shrubs to plant as screens.

Security

Once you have your house hidden from prying eyes, it’s time to make things difficult for someone to waltz in and take your home.  The very sad truth is that if a thief really wants it, they’re going to get it.  All locks and security measures can be canceled out very quickly.  With the advent of battery grinder wheels, I’ve seen even hardened security locks be rendered useless in about 10 seconds.

Lock The Hitch

If a trailer has a hitch lock, it’s that much more difficult for someone to hook it up and go.  I recommend the hitch vault because it surrounds the entire hitch and the pin is difficult to get at.  I used to use a simple hitch pad lock, but one day I needed to get at the hitch and had lost the key.  I grabbed my bolt cutters and, in literally 2 seconds, had it off.

Get It Off The Wheels

This is one of the most effective options in my mind because it represents a huge obstacle for anyone trying to steal the house.  When you get your house in it’s final spot, you need to get it off the wheels anyway to avoid tire shock and tire rot.

What I do is get the house lifted off the ground until I can remove the tires.  I secure it with solid blocks, then I remove all the wheels.  I hide the lug nuts in another location and put the tires in a shed which is also locked.  What this means is if someone wanted to steal my tiny house, they’d have to jack the house up some, break into a shed, find the wheels, carry them over, put them on and then have the correct number and type of lug nuts to fasten them on.  It’s not that likely and if they could, it would take a fair bit of time, which is time they could be caught.

Have A Mean Sounding Dog

Many criminals often steer clear of dogs because they’re unpredictable.  A good sized dog with a mean bark can go a long way to keeping your house and property safe.

Insurance

This is a controversial topic, but I still think its worth mentioning.  I still maintain the stance that even if you are able to get a policy for your tiny house, if you ever had a claim, they’d never honor it.  I’ve written about how little faith I have in insurance companies for tiny houses here.  For standard things like cars, traditional houses, etc. I feel like it is a good practice for people to carry insurance.

If something goes wrong and your home is damaged, has a fire, flood, etc., insurance is how we mitigate risk.  For tiny houses, I feel it’s better to have a wad of cash in the bank, but each person need to make that decision for themselves.

Your Turn!

  • How are you going to protect your house?
  • What tips do you have to share?
3 Comments
  1. What about the trailers with a detachable tongue? Will that help much?

  2. We have a Tiny Slide In. We used spray foam insulation and LOVE it. Apparently carpenter ants do too and set up a satallite nest in our walls and floors which we had to peel off and spray with ortho home defense! So our tip to Tiny Houser’s is to get your spray foam treated with borax or something or ask the company if they have that option to mix in with the spray foam installation. 🙂 ~Team JanCy

  3. Jacob and nancy… thank you so much I had no idea that the double cell spray foam insulation did that…I thought it was just great insulation …you know… that didn’t settle or that wasn’t heavy like natural wool and second I want you guys to know that… I do know this person that’s up in the article… she had her house at my place in my driveway… I had to evict her with eviction papers… big mess with this woman…then she took her tiny house to her rental in West Sacramento…which is a bad neighborhood…and just planted it there… she left everything in it now it’s got no walls barely no doors on it and she’s got everything in it all Nails screws insulation copper she’s got everything stored in it but not locked up stupid stupid stupid don’t make these mistakes…and somehow it got taken to basically around the corner and got left there… did she do it for publicity so maybe she might get donors to help her finish it… so she had to tow it back… her tires were rotted so I don’t know how it even bothered to move… but basically it was all done so she can get attention… that’s what I believe from dealing with this woman… she’s been building this for 3 years and finally got the wood frame up… finally… she’s gotten nowhere since it’s just been sitting in front of her rental for one whole year… this video actually was taken last year in 2016…she had enrolled in a school that taught people how to build houses… which I think is a great idea I would go through a tiny house people because she was using no codes whatsoever and if you go with tiny house people they usually know what they’re doing as far as codes but she wasn’t using one single code book…and basically nothing was done on the house after one year of it being there the frame was sort of up she had siding on it sort of the roof was not on the front door wasn’t on the back paneling was not on basically it was an open frame… she just expected other people to work on it for her… it got so bad that I had to call the police to get her off of my property…good luck dealing with this woman… stay away from her…
    This is my story…this is what happened to me… when you go out and you have to deal with somebody who’s building a tiny house… make sure you check into their background so this doesn’t happen to you… make sure you check into their background so that you don’t have someone on your property taking advantage of you… having people come over at all times of the day and night bothering you and your neighbor’s… expecting you to give food tea water to someone that she brought over to build on the house who had nothing with him in 90 to 100 degree weather…make sure you check out people if you’re going to have them on your property… don’t get used like me… don’t allow the kindness of your heart to override your brain check them out before you have them on your property

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