Keep your property safe

Here are a few preventive tips to keep your property safe from potential squatters :

- Remember to empty your letterbox regularly, as this is a sign that your property is occupied.

- If you are not at home:

    - Notify someone from "Voisins Vigilants".

        - For isolated residences, remember to register with the National Police under "Operation Tranquillité Vacances".

        - Keep the shutters open and don't let anyone know you're away (especially not on social networks)

- Remember to put double locks on your front door

- Use an alarm or video surveillance system company

- Make sure the fences and gates around your home are in good working order and well maintained

- Regularly check the lock on the main door of your property

- Keep your name visible on your letterbox and door

- Keep a water and electricity contract in your name at the residence

- Watch out for signs on the door (spray-painted red crosses, pieces of tape, scraps of paper in the doorway).

- Keep your property furnished, with all the furniture you need to live in it (table, sofa, bed, etc.)

- Remember to take out legal protection with your home insurance to cover bailiff's, court and lawyer's fees.

- Check with your insurance company to make sure that they take out legal expenses cover.

- Remember to take out legal protection with your home insurance to cover bailiff, court and lawyer fees.
- Check with your insurance company that they cover theft and vandalism.
Please note: a tenant present in the property after the end of their lease and without the owner's permission is not a squatter. A person who has been accommodated with the owner's consent and who remains in the property is not considered to be a squatter either.

The owner of the squatted residence, like the tenant, is the holder of a residential lease and has the right to take steps to evict the squatter from the flat concerned.