Do I need security for a vacant building?

What happens to an unwatched building

The first week, someone tests a door. The first month, the copper and the HVAC condensers go. Then the building becomes shelter, then a place to strip fixtures and wiring at leisure, then a fire risk with people inside it. Each stage is more expensive to reverse than the last, and each makes the building a known address. The owner’s exposure is not only the losses; it is the liability for anyone hurt inside a structure that was left open, and the insurer’s questions afterwards about what the owner did.

What insurers and receivers expect

Vacancy clauses in property policies typically require inspections and reasonable protection, and receivership orders and lender requirements usually spell out a security program. The daily report from a patrol post is the record that the program existed and was followed, which is why receivers and adjusters ask for it. A building with no record is a building whose owner has to argue.

What the post looks like

For most vacant buildings, a vehicle patrol on varied schedules: the officer walks the perimeter checking every door, window, board and gate against a checklist from the walk-through, looks for new footpaths, dumping and scrapper tools, goes inside on the interval the client wants, and reports anything changed with photographs for the owner’s contractor. A building that has already been entered gets a fixed post until it is secured. A building with a sprinkler or alarm system out of service, or damaged by fire or storm, may need a fire watch as well.

Land, retail centers and apartment complexes

Each is a different problem: land is all perimeter and dumping; a retail center is doors and roof access; a vacant apartment complex is thirty buildings and every one of them a way in. The vacant property hub has a page for each, and the vacant buildings article walks through the plan from the day the last tenant leaves.

Starting this week

Dispatch takes the address, the keys and the access arrangements, the receiver’s or owner’s contact and whether any system is impaired, and unarmed patrol can typically begin within hours.