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TECHNOLOGY THAT WILL HELP KEEP YOUR PROPERTY SECURE BY D E A N R O W L A N D There’s no place like home, especially when watching the nightly news. Local TV coverage peeks around the neighborhood corner to show shootings, lootings, robberies, law enforcement/civilian showdowns and home invasions. Consider that property crime makes up 83 percent of all crime committed in the United States, with the South outpacing the rest of the country with 41.4 percent of the total. One incident occurred every 4.9 seconds in 2020, according to SafeWise.com. $17.5 billion worth of property was reported stolen in 2020. Fortunately, property crime in Beaufort County is low by any standard, especially in the Hilton Head and Bluffton areas. But CrimeGrade reports that your home is 300 percent more likely to be robbed without a home security system. It’s no wonder that home security is on the Lowcountry homeowners’ radar for peace and assurance.
“The biggest thing for our clients is being able to keep an eye on their property when they’re not in town down here,” said Sean Stewart, sales and marketing manager for Custom Audio Video in Bluffton. “There’s a demand for surveillance to have an eye on everything, particularly 24-hour surveillance. It brings a sense of ease knowing what’s going on in your property.” Security and home monitoring systems go hand in hand with today’s smart home technology with internet-connected devices like cameras with motion detection, smart locks and video doorbells. “Typically, homeowners want a home monitoring system, such as an alarm system,” said Anna Shields, operations manager at Hot Wired Audio Video in Hilton Head. “And a lot of times in conjunction with that are cameras, often exterior and interior.”
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