Guide
Vacant property security cost: the seven things a quote is built from
Updated
There is no honest single price for securing an empty building, because the job is not one product. It is a bundle of screens, blocks, cameras, visits and sometimes people, each priced on a different unit. Here is how a real quote is put together.
Every option is priced on a different unit
- Steel screens and steel door sets
- Priced per opening, plus fitting, plus removal at the end. Count your ground-floor doors, windows, shutters and any opening reachable from a flat roof or bin store; that count is most of the quote.
- Concrete barriers and anti-trespass blocks
- Priced per block or per metre of perimeter, plus delivery and placement. A HIAB or crane on a tight site is a separate line.
- Alarm and CCTV towers
- Priced per tower per week or month, usually with monitoring bundled or priced alongside. Delivery, installation and collection are normally extra.
- Manned guarding
- Priced per guard-hour. Continuous cover is 168 hours a week, so this scales in a straight line with the hours you buy and dominates any budget it appears in.
- Key holding and inspection visits
- Priced per visit, sometimes with a monthly retainer for holding the keys. Travel distance is the main variable.
Because the units differ, comparing two quotes means comparing like for like. A cheap screening quote that excludes removal and a dearer one that includes it are not the same offer. Ask every provider to itemise installation, hire period, monitoring, callouts and removal.
The full cost-driver table
The cost-driver table on the home page sets out all seven variables, why each one moves the number, and the exact line to ask for. Use it as a checklist when you read a quote.
Where empty-building budgets usually go wrong
- Counting the wrong openings. Providers count anything a person can reach, including first-floor windows over a lean-to and roof lights. Walk the outside of the building and count what a determined person could get to.
- Guessing the duration. Hire is cheap for a few weeks and expensive for two years. If the building is empty until a sale completes, ask for both the hire rate and the purchase price and work out the breakeven yourself.
- Buying cameras without response. A monitored tower that nobody attends is a recording of your own losses. Agree who responds, how fast, and what an extra callout costs before you sign.
- Forgetting removal. Screens and blocks have to come off. If de-installation is not on the quote, it will arrive as an invoice later, sometimes at short notice when a buyer wants access.
- Leaving water on. The most expensive thing that happens to most empty buildings is not theft, it is a burst pipe running for a fortnight. Drain-down costs a fraction of the damage.
Getting comparable quotes
- Write down the building type, rough size, opening count and how long it will stand empty. Send the same four facts to every provider.
- Ask each of them to price the same scope, and to itemise delivery, install, hire period, monitoring, callouts and removal.
- Use our quote form to reach providers who already cover your postcode, so you are not paying for someone's travel time to your site.