The holiday season is a time full of festive decorations, fun music, office parties, and time with family and friends. Unfortunately, it's also one of the busiest times for thieves and criminal activity in Houston. Every holiday season, a growing number of Houstonians find themselves victims of theft, either from home burglaries, package theft or vehicle theft. In today's blog post, we'll offer four ways Houstonians can reduce the threat of theft this holiday season.

Whether you buy a home or business, maintaining the property is essential for the safety of family members, visitors, customers or employees. Ongoing maintenance for a residential or commercial property should not just include the interior of the property but also the exterior landscaping and trees. Today's blog post will focus on the importance of properly maintaining your outdoor landscaping and shade trees for maximum safety and reduced liability.

It can be easy to think that if we just have insurance coverage for our possessions that we're secure. In reality, individuals and families can make simple mistakes when it comes to property insurance coverage, and this can leave policyholders devastated when disaster strikes. It's important to understand the common mistakes people make when it comes to property insurance, and learn how to avoid them to ensure proper coverage, better premiums, and great help when it's needed most.

Halloween is fast approaching, and with it comes an opportunity for property owners to welcome children and families to their doorstep with trick-or-treating festivities. Before welcoming visitors to your property this Halloween, it's important to make sure your property is safe to prevent falls, slips and other personal injuries or property damage. Here are three ways to make your residential or commercial property safer in time for trick-or-treaters this Halloween.

In our previous blog post, we looked at the reasons why homeowners, renters and business owners put themselves and their property in jeopardy when attempting DIY projects. Trusting these projects to professional companies and contractors keeps individuals and their families safe, and it reduces incidents of property damage.

For many Houston homeowners, particularly those living in older homes, there is often a desire to make home improvements, such as renovating a bathroom, installing recessed lighting, painting the exterior of the home, or removing a tree for better visibility. While cable shows and Internet videos can make home improvement projects look simple enough, in reality a vast majority of home improvement projects can be dangerous, leading to personal injury and property damages.

In our lifetime, we accumulate a large amount of things, ranging from small, mundane items to sentimental and expensive assets. Although we may have a house or apartment full of items, it would be a struggle to create a detailed list of our possessions from memory, much less the current value of these items. When disasters like a house fire or apartment theft occur, policyholders need to provide accurate details regarding their missing or damaged items. This process is especially painful when dealing with the shock and emotional rollercoaster of a burglary or fire.

Thanks to the Internet, many records and legal documents are now available to search and review online, whether they are marriage records, birth records, divorce records, and even property records. Although it can be convenient to have access to this information at any time, in reality the online publication of this sensitive information jeopardizes an individual's security and privacy. It is critical for people to take proactive steps to minimize or better control the kind of public information that's available online, for the privacy and safety of family members and property.

Social media can be a fun and engaging way to connect with family and friends through quick and simple updates. While you might think social media posts and pictures are harmless and innocent, others might see them as opportunities for theft, vandalism and other criminal activity. Social media posts can easily put people and property at risk, so it's important to understand how criminals can use our social media posts against us, and safer ways to communicate through social media.

Homeowners, renters and business owners can prepare for disasters or catastrophic events in a wide variety of ways. Preparations might include buying fire extinguishers for a home, trimming trees to reduce property damage during severe weather, or installing security cameras in a business to deter thieves. One of the most destructive and unexpected disasters that can impact a homeowner, renter or business owner is a lightning strike.