Renter Security Without Drilling

Before you start

• Read your lease for the clauses about alterations, fixtures and anything attached to the exterior. That is the document that decides this, not a forum post.
• Ask the landlord about the two things worth asking for: longer strike screws, and a deadbolt if there is not one. Both are cheap, both improve the property, and both are frequently agreed.
• Find out who else holds a key. Previous tenants, contractors and a management company are all common and all outside your control.
• Check whether the entrance door is fire-rated, which in apartment buildings it very often is. That rules out drilling regardless of the lease.

The job

1. Do the free things first, because they are the ones that workStop leaving a key anywhere outside. Cut back whatever screens the windows from the street. Turn on a light that makes the approach visible. Register deliveries so parcels are not advertising an empty flat. None of these needs permission and together they change more than most of the hardware below.
2. Ask for the two changes worth asking forLonger screws in the strike plate and hinges cost a few dollars and improve the landlord’s property. A deadbolt where there is none is a bigger ask but a reasonable one. Put it in writing, keep the reply, and you may find the answer is simply yes.
3. Add a portable brace at the doorA brace that hooks over the strike plate needs no tools and leaves no marks, which makes it the one door reinforcement that fits a lease without a conversation. It goes on when you are in and comes off when you leave — read the warning above before it becomes a habit.
4. Use clamp-on stops at the windows, sorted properlyTrack stops clamp without drilling. Sort the windows into escape openings and everything else first, exactly as the window stops page describes, and keep keyed stops off any room somebody sleeps in.
5. Choose battery over wired for anything that watchesA battery doorbell mounts to an existing bracket or an adhesive plate and comes off in one piece. An indoor camera sits on a shelf. Wired anything means drilling and an alteration, and it is rarely worth the conversation compared with what you gain.
6. Photograph everything on the day you move inDoor, frame, strike plate, windows, and any damage. It costs five minutes and it settles the deposit conversation about screw holes, adhesive marks and a door that was already like that. This is the least glamorous item on the site and one of the most useful.

Stop and call somebody if

• The lease forbids the fitting and you were going to do it anyway. Ask instead; the answer is often yes and the alternative costs a deposit.
• The entrance door is fire-rated. Nothing gets drilled into it, whatever the lease says about alterations.
• You suspect somebody outside the household still has a key. That is a conversation with the landlord about a lock change, and it outranks everything else on this page.

What goes wrong

• Buying hardware before reading the lease.
• Leaving a portable brace on the door as a permanent state in a home where somebody lives alone.
• Skipping the free measures because they do not feel like doing something.

Where this applies

• A Rented Apartment Door — The key list: in a rented apartment you have no idea how many keys were cut before you arrived, and no lock upgrade you can make changes that.
• Ground-Floor Windows — Habit: the overwhelming majority of ground-floor window entries are through a window that was left open or unlatched, not one that was forced.
• The Porch and Package Theft — Time: a parcel sitting visible on a step for six hours is the entire problem, and every measure that shortens those six hours beats every measure that records them.

Hardware this job may need

• Door Reinforcement Locks & Bars — buying time at the door, without blocking the way out
• Window Locks & Stops — limiting how far a window opens without trapping anyone
• Video Doorbells — seeing the doorstep before opening it

Sources

• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — renting resources
• National Fire Protection Association — home fire safety and escape planning
• Ready.gov — making a household emergency plan