High Net Worth Security for Empty Homes and Second Homes

Posted On:Oct 18, 2026
Posted By:Michael Braun

High net worth security when nobody is home

High net worth security is tested more often when nobody is home than when the family is sitting in the kitchen. On October 7, 2026, FOX 10 Phoenix reported that police in the Phoenix area had arrested a 41-year-old Scottsdale man they suspect in a series of burglaries at high-end homes in Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Phoenix, Gilbert and Mesa. According to court documents described by the station, he followed wealthy people from his social circle on Instagram, waited for posts showing they were out of state or abroad, and then went to their houses late at night. Investigators say he routinely shut off the main power breaker to kill the security cameras before forcing a rear glass door or window.

A week later and much closer to my own work, ABC7 Los Angeles reported that an Eagle Rock homeowner believes thieves broke into her house on a Monday afternoon while she was at a doctor’s appointment. Her husband had left about 15 minutes earlier. She told the station the burglars avoided the front Ring camera by coming in through the side, broke glass, and emptied a locked bedroom closet that held a handbag collection she estimates at $250,000 to $300,000, along with watches and a jewelry box.

One case is an alleged months-long pattern across five cities. The other is a single afternoon in Los Angeles. What they have in common is the problem I want to work through in this article: the house was empty, the people who lived there had done some of the right things, and the people who broke in had planned around exactly those things.

This article is part of the cluster that supports our 2026 guide to high net worth security, where empty homes and multiple residences have their own section. Here I go deeper into that section: why a vacant house is a different security problem from an occupied one, how cameras and alarms should be designed so that cutting the power becomes an alarm rather than a blindfold, how families with two, three or five properties keep each one protected, and what a professional team actually does with a house that nobody is living in this week.

If you have read my earlier piece on protecting family homes while schedules are public, that article focuses on the moment a principal’s public appearance tells the world where they are. This one is about the quieter and far more common situation: the ordinary vacation, the second home that sits closed for months, the house that is empty for an afternoon.

Residential security officer checks a locked breaker panel by the side gate of a dark, empty hillside villa at dusk

Key takeaways

An empty house needs its own security plan. The people who would normally notice a problem are not there, so detection and response have to be built in rather than assumed.
Design cameras and alarms so that losing power or internet becomes an alert. Police say the Scottsdale suspect shut off main breakers to disable cameras; a system with battery backup and cellular signaling turns that move into a warning.
Treat social media as part of the perimeter. Investigators say vacation posts were used to confirm houses were empty. Post after you return, not while you are away.
Cover the sides and the back, not only the front door. In Eagle Rock the homeowner says the thieves came in from the side to stay out of the front camera’s view.
A locked closet slows a burglar down; it does not stop one. Valuables that matter belong in a rated safe that is anchored, alarmed and out of sight, or off the property.
Every property in a portfolio needs a named owner, a written vacancy routine and a response plan that someone has tested.
When an alert comes in at a vacant house, somebody has to decide what happens next within minutes. Decide in advance who that is.

What police say happened in the Scottsdale burglary series

I want to be careful with the facts here, because the case is at an early stage and the man arrested has not been convicted of anything. What follows is what FOX 10 Phoenix reported from documents filed in Maricopa County Superior Court and from police statements.

Police arrested the suspect, Tyler Lee Johnston, early on a Sunday after a joint investigation by five Valley law enforcement agencies. Investigators suspect he may be connected to somewhere between a dozen and more than 20 residential burglaries in Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Phoenix, Gilbert and Mesa. The station listed stolen property that included Rolex and Cartier watches, designer bags, firearms, custom silver bars and a signed Kobe Bryant MVP jersey valued at more than $100,000.

According to the court documents, he identified victims through mutual social circles in the Scottsdale hospitality scene and followed them on Instagram. When they posted photos or video showing they were traveling, investigators say he used those posts to confirm the house was empty. The pattern described in the records is consistent: late-night visits, a white Toyota Camry, the main power breaker switched off to shut down electricity and cameras, then forced entry through rear glass doors or windows, wearing a ski mask, gloves and dark clothing.

Detectives reportedly began to close in after stolen silver bars were traced to a precious metals shop in Tucson, where the station says he sold them under his real name, along with pawn transactions around the Valley. Police then put him under active surveillance with drones and live phone location tracking. On October 4, officers say they watched him break into a Phoenix home through a front window and drive to his business office in Tempe, where he was arrested getting out of his car, still in a black ski mask. Searches of his home and office reportedly turned up more stolen items, including a rare watch a victim had reported missing days earlier.

Two of the victims told FOX 10 they had become friends with him on Instagram after business dealings in 2022. One said a large rock was thrown through the front window and that about six figures of jewelry and watches were taken, including items that belonged to his wife’s late grandmother. In a follow-up report on October 8, one victim described an attempted break-in in January while he was in Atlanta and a completed burglary a month later while he was at a Super Bowl party. Scottsdale police used the case to remind residents to be mindful of what they share publicly while traveling.

Several things in this account matter for how I protect empty homes, and I will come back to each of them:

The suspect allegedly came from inside the victims’ extended social world, not from a random street crew. That changes what “keeping a low profile” has to mean.
The timing signal came from the victims themselves, through their own posts.
The camera systems allegedly went dark because they depended on house power.
Entry was reportedly through rear glass, the part of a house that is usually least watched and least hardened.
The case was broken by investigators following the property, not by the alarm systems at the houses.

The Eagle Rock break-in and the fifteen-minute gap

The Eagle Rock case is different in scale but it teaches a lesson that I see again and again in Los Angeles. According to ABC7, Patricia Vuagniaux believes the break-in happened on Monday afternoon, October 12, while she was at a doctor’s appointment, and about 15 minutes after her husband left the house. She described an in-depth security system, reinforced windows and a lock on the bedroom closet where she kept a collection of Hermès bags she had built over 20 years and considered part of her retirement savings.

She told the station the thieves “were strategic enough to avoid the Ring camera in the front so they came through the side.” Video from inside the home showed shattered glass and a ransacked closet. Watches were taken, and so was a jewelry box holding her daughters’ baby teeth, which she said was the loss that hurt more than anything else. ABC7 said it had reached out to the LAPD for more information. As of the report, there was no public word on an arrest, and I am not going to guess at who did it or how they knew the house was empty.

What I take from her account is how short the window was. A house does not have to be empty for two weeks to be an empty house. It can be empty for an hour on a weekday afternoon, and if someone is watching, that hour is enough. Many families I meet think about vacancy as something that happens during summer travel or over the holidays. In practice, a residence without a resident security officer is vacant every time the last adult leaves, and an observant burglar only needs to learn the rhythm.

Her experience also shows the gap between “having a security system” and “having security.” Reinforced windows and a locked closet are real measures. A front camera is a real measure. But the people who came in had apparently planned a route that stayed out of the camera’s view, and they were prepared to break glass and force a door inside the house. The measures slowed them, perhaps, but nothing in the account suggests that anyone was alerted in time to respond while they were still there.

That is the standard I hold a residential program to. The question is not whether you own the right equipment. The question is whether the right person learns, quickly enough, that something is wrong, and whether they can do something about it.

Why empty homes are a different security problem

When I assess an occupied residence, I am thinking about the safety of the people inside first and property second. When I assess a house that is regularly empty, the priorities and the assumptions both change, and a plan that works well for one situation can fail completely in the other.

In an occupied home, a lot of security happens without anyone calling it security. Lights go on and off. Cars come and go. A housekeeper notices that the side gate is open. A child hears a noise. A neighbor sees the family’s car and assumes all is well. An intruder has to worry that someone will walk into the room. All of those human signals disappear when the house is empty, and the only things left are the physical barriers, the technology and whatever response has been arranged in advance.

Empty homes also change the attacker’s time budget. An intruder at an occupied house is usually in a hurry. An intruder at a house they believe is empty can take their time, move from room to room, search closets and attempt a safe. The Scottsdale court records describe forced entry and the theft of collections; the Eagle Rock account describes a ransacked closet. That kind of loss requires time inside.

Finally, empty homes depend heavily on systems that many people never test. A family can live in a house for years without once checking what happens to the cameras when the power goes out, how long the alarm panel’s battery lasts, whether the monitoring company calls the right person, or what the patrol company actually does when it receives a call at 2 a.m. Those questions only get answered on the night it matters, which is the wrong time to find out.

So I approach an empty home with three questions. How will we know that someone is on the property? How quickly will someone with authority to act find out? And what will that person do in the next ten minutes? Everything else in this article is a way of answering those three questions well.

Cutting the power: designing cameras and alarms that fail loud

The detail in the Scottsdale court records that I would put in front of every homeowner is the breaker box. According to the documents FOX 10 described, the suspect routinely shut off the main power breaker to cut electricity and disable the security cameras before going in. If that is what happened, then at those houses the camera system was a passenger, not a guard. It needed house power to work, and the person it was supposed to record was the one who turned the power off.

I see this vulnerability constantly. Many residential camera systems, including quite expensive ones, are wired to a recorder that sits on house power and connects to the outside world through the home’s internet router, which also sits on house power. Kill the main breaker and the cameras, the recorder and the internet connection all go down at the same moment. Depending on how the system is configured, the owner’s phone may show nothing at all, or a vague “device offline” notice that looks exactly like an ordinary outage.

The fix is not complicated, but it has to be designed rather than hoped for. Here is how I want a residential system to behave when someone cuts the power:

The alarm panel keeps running on its own battery and has a cellular communicator, so it can still send a signal when house power and internet are gone. The panel should report an AC power loss as its own event, not just silently switch to battery.
Critical cameras and the recorder sit on an uninterruptible power supply sized to keep them running for a realistic period, and the network equipment they depend on is on the same backup.
There is a second path out of the house for video, typically a cellular link, so that the monitoring station or the security team can still see the property when the home internet is down.
The breaker panel itself is protected. An exterior panel should be locked, inside the perimeter where possible, covered by a camera that is on backup power and fitted with a contact sensor so that opening it generates an alert.
A power loss at a vacant house is treated as a security event until someone confirms it is a utility outage. In a neighborhood-wide outage, the streetlights are out too. When one house goes dark at 1 a.m. and the neighbors’ lights are on, that is not a utility problem.

The same thinking applies to internet outages, which are another way to blind a system that relies on Wi-Fi. A camera that loses its connection should generate a tamper alert. A system that suddenly shows several cameras offline at once should be treated as suspicious, not as a nuisance to be fixed next week.

I also want the response rules written down. If the monitoring station receives a power loss event at a vacant residence followed by a door or glass-break signal, who gets called, in what order, and what are they authorized to do? If nobody can answer that question in one sentence, the equipment will not save the house, however good it is.

None of this makes a home impossible to break into. What it does is take away the specific advantage the alleged Scottsdale pattern relied on, which was the assumption that once the power was off, nobody would know. Good residential design is about turning each of an intruder’s planned moves into a warning that reaches someone who can act.

Home security for high net worth individuals with more than one residence

Home security for high net worth individuals becomes a portfolio problem once a family owns more than one house. A family might have a primary residence in Los Angeles, a beach house in Malibu, a ranch property, an apartment in New York and a vacation home abroad. At any moment, several of those properties are empty, and each one sits in a different environment, with a different response picture and a different set of local people who know the family is not there.

A mistake I see again and again is uneven protection. The primary residence gets a serious program, sometimes with on-site officers, while the secondary homes get an alarm contract and a caretaker who “keeps an eye on things.” The weaker houses are often where the valuables sit unattended for months, where the alarm codes have not been changed in years, and where the family’s absence is easy to confirm because nobody has been there since August.

I approach a multi-residence family by building a single standard for all properties and then deciding, property by property, how much of that standard to staff, monitor or automate. Every house gets the same basic elements:

A named person who owns the security of that property and who answers for it.
A current assessment of the perimeter, entry points, lighting, cameras, alarms and valuables, refreshed when anything material changes.
A monitoring arrangement that works when the power and internet are down.
A written response plan for an alarm, a camera alert and a physical incident, including the local law enforcement agency’s non-emergency and emergency contacts and the address details a responding officer needs.
A vacancy routine: what happens when the house is closed, what is checked on each visit and how often, and what is done when the family returns.
A record of who holds keys, codes and gate fobs, reviewed on a fixed schedule.

Some of those properties will justify a full-time residential officer. Some will justify scheduled patrols and remote video monitoring. A few may only need well-designed technology and a trusted caretaker who knows what to look for. The point is that each level is chosen deliberately, rather than by default, and that the family office can see all of them on one page.

Different locations also bring different response times. A house in a gated community with private patrol is a different problem from a ranch where the nearest sheriff’s patrol car might be a long drive away. I wrote about this in the context of Malibu estates when access fails and for Santa Barbara residential security: when public response is slow or a road is closed, the property has to hold on its own for longer, and the plan has to reflect that.

Closing and opening a seasonal home

Seasonal homes deserve a routine of their own, because the moment a family closes a house for the season and the moment they open it again are both points where things go wrong.

When a house is closed, I want a written checklist completed and signed off by the person responsible. It should cover the obvious items, such as locking every door and window and setting the alarm, and the less obvious ones that experienced burglars look for:

Ladders, tools and outdoor furniture that could be used to reach an upper window are stored and secured.
Side gates, pool gates and service entrances are locked, and their keys are accounted for.
Garage door openers are not left in vehicles parked outside, and remote access to the garage is disabled if it is not needed.
Lighting is on timers or smart controls that vary, rather than one lamp switching on at 7 p.m. every night.
Mail, deliveries and newspapers are stopped or collected, and landscaping and pool service continue on their normal schedule so the house does not look abandoned.
Valuables are removed, placed in a rated safe or documented and insured; jewelry and watches should not be left in dresser drawers or closets.
Battery backups for the alarm panel, cameras and network equipment are tested.
The monitoring station and the patrol or response provider are told the house is vacant and given the correct contact list for the period.

Opening the house is equally important. I do not want a family to be the first people to walk into a house that has been empty for months. Before they arrive, someone should walk the property, check every entry point, review the alarm and camera history for the vacancy period, confirm that nothing has been disturbed and confirm that systems are working. If there are signs of an intrusion, the family should be told before they arrive, not discover it by walking into it.

Returning home also creates a specific exposure. Families tend to post about the end of a trip, and they tend to arrive tired, with luggage, at night. Arrivals are a moment of predictable distraction. On high-risk trips, I would rather have a member of the security team arrive at the house first, open it, and hand it back to the family, than have the family walk up to a dark front door with their arms full.

Caretakers, house checks and the people who are there when you are not

In the Scottsdale case, according to the victims who spoke to FOX 10, the suspect was someone they knew socially. That should make every family think hard about who knows when their homes are empty. The honest answer is usually a long list: housekeepers, gardeners, pool service, a property manager, a caretaker, a dog walker, the family office, a travel agent, friends who were invited along, friends who were not, and anyone who follows the family online.

Nearly all of those people are trustworthy, and the household depends on them. But security is not about suspecting everyone. It is about deciding who needs to know what, and building the house routines so that an empty house does not depend on everyone’s discretion being perfect. I covered vetting in detail in our post on household staff vetting for UHNW families, and I covered vendor access in our piece on vendor access control at Beverly Hills estates. For empty homes, three additional practices matter.

First, limit the travel information that goes to the wider household. A gardener needs to know the service schedule. They do not need the family’s flight numbers. A housekeeper may need to know when the family returns. They do not need the details of every leg of a trip.

Second, make house checks structured, not casual. A caretaker who “drives by” is not doing a house check. A proper check has a checklist, a set route around the property, specific things to look at and photograph, and a record that is sent to the person responsible. The checklist should include the breaker panel, side and rear entries, glass doors, signs of someone testing a lock, packages or flyers that have been left to see whether they are collected, and any change in the neighborhood such as a car that has been parked nearby for days.

Third, vary the checks. A caretaker who visits at 10 a.m. every Tuesday has created a schedule that anyone watching can learn. Visits should happen at different times and on different days, and occasionally at night.

I also want the people who check a vacant house to know what to do if they find something wrong. A caretaker who walks in on a burglary in progress is in danger. The instruction should be simple: if a door is open, glass is broken or there are signs that someone may be inside, do not go in. Leave, call the police and then call the security contact. That rule protects the caretaker and preserves the scene for investigators.

Personal security for high networth individuals starts with what you post

Personal security for high networth individuals has an uncomfortable digital lead-in, and the Scottsdale case puts it in plain view. According to the court records described by FOX 10, the suspect used victims’ own Instagram posts to confirm they were away. The October 8 follow-up quoted security experts advising travelers to adjust privacy settings, turn off location tracking and secure entry points before leaving.

I am not going to tell any family to stop sharing their lives. What I tell them is that real-time posting from a trip is the same as leaving a note on the front door that says the house is empty. The practical rules are simple:

Post after you return, not while you are away. A photo from the beach is just as nice a week later.
Remove location tags and be careful with backgrounds that identify where you are.
Review who follows private accounts, and remember that a private account still includes everyone you have accepted.
Ask older children and house guests to follow the same rule, because the family’s exposure includes everyone’s accounts.
Be careful with automatic out-of-office messages that state dates and destinations.
Do not publicize the arrival of valuable items, collections or renovations that show the inside of the home.

This is the digital piece, and I keep it short on purpose. The aim of controlling what you post is physical: to make sure the people who would like to know whether your house is empty cannot find out easily. The physical layers still have to be there for the day someone finds out anyway.

Valuables, safes and the rooms burglars head for

Both of this month’s cases involved collections: watches, jewelry, designer bags, firearms, silver and sports memorabilia in Arizona, and a handbag collection, watches and a jewelry box in Eagle Rock. Burglars who target affluent homes know where people keep these things. They go to the primary bedroom, the walk-in closet, the dressing room and the study, and they look for safes.

The Eagle Rock homeowner had a lock on her closet. That is better than nothing, and I understand why people do it. But a closet lock is designed to keep a door closed, not to resist someone with time and tools. Once an intruder is inside a house they believe is empty, a closet door is a minor delay.

For valuables that matter, financially or emotionally, I recommend a simple hierarchy:

Remove what you do not need at the house. If a collection does not need to be at a seasonal home while the family is away, it should be in a bank vault, a professional storage facility or a secured location at the primary residence.
Use a rated safe, installed properly. A safe should be bolted to the structure, positioned so that it cannot easily be attacked with leverage, and sized for what it holds. A small safe sitting on a closet floor can simply be carried out.
Alarm the safe and the room. A vibration or contact sensor on the safe, and motion coverage of the room it is in, give the monitoring station a specific signal that something is happening where the valuables are.
Keep the location private. The number of people who know where the safe is and what it holds should be small. Renovation photos, contractor crews and real estate listings have all exposed safe rooms in the past.
Document everything. Photographs, serial numbers, appraisals and receipts make insurance claims and police work far easier, and they are part of what helped investigators in Arizona trace property that was sold.

The irreplaceable items deserve special thought. The Eagle Rock homeowner said the loss that hurts her more than anything else was a jewelry box with her daughters’ baby teeth. A Scottsdale victim spoke about heirlooms from his wife’s late grandmother. No insurance policy replaces those things. If something cannot be replaced, it should either travel with the family or be stored where a burglar cannot get to it.

Private security for high net worth family members who stay behind

Private security for high net worth family members has a gap that the phrase “the house is empty” can hide. Sometimes the principal is traveling, but the house is not actually empty. An elderly parent stays behind. A college-age son comes home for the weekend without telling anyone. A housekeeper lives in. A house-sitter is looking after the dogs.

Those people are in a more exposed position than the family that left. An intruder who expects an empty house and finds someone inside creates exactly the kind of confrontation that turns a burglary into a violent incident. That is why I treat “who is actually in the house tonight” as security information that the monitoring station and the response provider need to have.

For a family that travels often, I build the vacancy plan with three states rather than two: occupied by the family, occupied by others, and vacant. Each state has its own instructions. If a house-sitter or a relative is there, they need to know how the alarm works, how to reach the security contact, what to do if they hear someone at night and where in the house they should go. If you have a safe room, they need to know how to use it. Our post on safe room planning for UHNW homes covers that in detail. The monitoring station should be told that someone is inside so that an alarm at 2 a.m. is treated as a possible threat to a person rather than to property.

I also want the people staying behind to understand that their own posts matter. A relative who posts that they are house-sitting at the family’s beach house has announced both that the family is away and that one person is alone in the house.

When an alert comes in at 3 a.m.: response at a vacant property

The Scottsdale case was broken by investigators who followed stolen property and then watched the suspect, not by the home systems. That is a credit to the police, but it should make families ask a hard question: when their own system detects something, what happens?

At an occupied house with an on-site officer, the answer is usually clear. At a vacant house, the answer is often a chain of phone calls. The monitoring station calls the first number on the list. That person is asleep, or on a plane, or in a different time zone. The station calls the second number. Eventually someone decides whether to dispatch police, whether to send a patrol, whether it is a false alarm. In the meantime, the intruder has had twenty minutes inside.

I want vacant-property response decided in advance and written in one place:

What signal triggers what action. A single motion alert on an exterior camera might justify a video check. A power loss followed by a glass-break signal justifies a police dispatch and a response from the security provider without waiting for a family member to answer the phone.
Who has authority to act. The security team or the family office should be authorized to request police and send a patrol without calling the principal first.
Who goes to the property and what they do. A private responder should not enter a house where an intruder may still be. Their job is to observe, meet police, give officers the information they need, and secure the property afterward.
What police need to know. Gate codes, the layout, whether anyone could be inside, whether there are firearms in the house and whether there are dogs. That information should be ready to hand over, not looked up at 3 a.m.
What happens after. Preserving footage, documenting the scene, notifying the family, boarding a broken window and resetting the systems.

Response time is a fact of geography. In some Los Angeles neighborhoods, police response to a burglary alarm with no confirmed threat can take time, and in remote areas the nearest unit can be far away. Remote video verification helps, because a confirmed intrusion carries more weight than an unverified alarm. But when the house matters and response is slow, a family should decide whether scheduled patrols or an on-site officer are justified during vacancy periods. Our post on patrols versus 24/7 on-site residential security lays out how I make that decision.

Security for UHNW family offices managing several properties

Security for UHNW family offices often comes down to this kind of operational detail. The family office is usually the place where all the residences meet: it pays the alarm contracts, hires the caretakers, arranges the travel and holds the keys. That puts it in a position to see the whole picture, and also makes it the place where the picture can leak.

For multi-residence families, I want the family office to keep a single property register that shows, for each house:

Its current occupancy status and the dates of planned vacancies.
The security level assigned to it and why.
The monitoring provider, patrol or on-site arrangement, and the date each system was last tested, including backup power.
Who holds keys, codes and fobs, and when they were last changed.
The caretaker or house-check schedule and the last report received.
Open issues: broken cameras, gates that do not close properly, overdue maintenance.

The register itself is sensitive. It tells anyone who reads it which houses are empty and when. It should be held by a small number of people, protected properly, and never sent around by email as an attachment. Travel itineraries deserve the same treatment. I wrote about schedule leaks in our post on security for UHNW family offices and the calendar; vacancy dates are part of the same problem.

The family office also needs to make sure the security standard does not quietly erode. Camera faults go unrepaired, a gate motor fails and the gate is left open, a departing employee’s code is not removed. A quarterly review of each property against its standard catches these things before an intruder does.

High net worth security services for a portfolio of homes

High net worth security services for empty homes come in several forms, and families often buy the wrong one because they do not know the difference. In plain terms:

Alarm monitoring means a central station receives signals and calls the contact list or dispatches police. It is necessary, but on its own it is reactive and depends on the quality of the contact list and the dispatch rules.
Remote video monitoring means trained operators can look at cameras when an alert comes in, or on a schedule, and verify what is happening. It is far more useful for vacant homes, as long as the cameras keep working when the power is cut.
Mobile patrol means a vehicle visits the property at intervals and responds to alarms. Its value depends on how many properties the patrol covers, how far away it is and what the officer is trained and permitted to do.
On-site residential security means a licensed officer or team is physically present. For high-value or high-risk properties during vacancy, this is the layer that turns detection into immediate response.
A security program ties those pieces together with assessment, standards, written procedures, supervision and reporting, so that each property gets the level it needs and someone is accountable for all of it.

In California, private security officers must hold a guard registration with the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services, and companies providing them must be licensed. Any provider you hire for a vacant property should be able to show both, along with insurance and a clear statement of what their officers will and will not do.

At MSB Protection we also run in-house research and development, building and testing our own tools and methods against the threats our clients actually face. For empty homes that work centers on the questions in this article: how to know quickly that something is wrong at a property no one is watching, and how to get the right person to act.

What recommended HNW security teams do with an empty house

Families sometimes ask me what separates recommended HNW security teams from ordinary providers. I wrote a full answer in our post on what separates recommended HNW security teams. For empty homes specifically, I look for a few habits.

They test the system the way an intruder would. They switch off the breaker and see what happens. They disconnect the internet and see what alerts arrive. They walk the sides and back of the house at night and see what the cameras actually show.

They plan around the family’s real calendar. They know when a house will be empty, they adjust coverage before the family leaves, and they do not wait to be asked.

They keep house checks structured and varied, and they send reports that the family office actually reads.

They make response decisions in advance and get the family’s agreement on them, so that nobody has to wake the principal to decide whether to call the police.

And they close the loop. When something happens, they preserve evidence, help police, review what the systems did and did not do, and fix the gap.

Close protection for UHNW families on the road, and the house they left

Close protection for UHNW families is usually thought of as something that travels with the family: the agent in the car, the advance at the hotel. But the protection program also has to answer for the house the family has left. Some of the clearest risks for a traveling family are at home, precisely because the family is visibly away.

When I plan a protective detail for a trip, the residential side of the plan is written at the same time. The detail leader knows the status of each residence. If the residential team reports a problem, the detail leader decides with the family how and when to tell them. If there is a threat that could follow the family, such as a stalker who has been seen near the house, both sides of the program share that information immediately.

The end of a trip is a joint operation as well. The residential team confirms the house is clear before the family returns, and the protective detail brings them home. This is not complicated, but it only happens if the two sides of the program are run as one.

Family office high net worth individuals security: a vacancy checklist

Family office high net worth individuals security works better with short, written routines than with good intentions. This is the checklist I would give a family office before any extended vacancy:

Confirm the dates the house will be empty and who, if anyone, will stay there.
Tell the monitoring station, the patrol or on-site provider and the caretaker, and update the contact list and response rules for the period.
Test backup power and cellular communication for the alarm, cameras and network.
Check that the breaker panel is locked, covered by a camera and alarmed.
Walk the perimeter and check side and rear entries, glass doors, windows and gates.
Store ladders, tools and anything that could help someone reach an upper floor.
Remove or secure valuables and update the photographic inventory.
Set lighting schedules that vary and keep normal services running.
Agree on house-check times, varied, with a written checklist and photos.
Remind the family and guests not to post from the trip in real time.
Before the family returns, have the property checked, the camera history reviewed and the house confirmed clear.

Frequently asked questions

What does high net worth security for an empty home include?

At a minimum: an assessment of the property, an alarm and camera system that keeps working and keeps reporting when house power or internet is cut, a monitoring arrangement that verifies alerts, a written response plan with clear authority to act, structured and varied house checks, secured valuables, and controlled information about when the house is empty. Higher-risk properties add patrols or on-site officers during vacancy periods.

How do burglars know a house is empty?

Often because someone told them, directly or indirectly. In the Scottsdale case, investigators say the suspect used victims’ own vacation posts. Other common signals are uncollected deliveries, unchanging lighting, an empty driveway, predictable staff schedules and people in the family’s circle who know the travel plans. Controlling those signals is part of the protection.

Is home security for high net worth individuals different at a second home?

The principles are the same, but second homes are usually empty for longer, sit in different response environments and get less attention. They need the same standard as the primary residence, with protection levels chosen deliberately for each property and a named person responsible for each one.

Do recommended HNW security teams test camera systems against power cuts?

They should. A team that has not switched off the breaker and checked what happens does not know whether your cameras will record or report an intrusion. Ask any provider to show you how the system behaves without house power and without the home internet connection.

What should a caretaker do if they find signs of a break-in?

Not go inside. Leave the property, call the police, then call the security contact. Wait for officers, give them access information and let them clear the house. Do not touch damaged doors or windows, so that evidence is preserved.

Bringing empty homes into the security plan

The Scottsdale case and the Eagle Rock break-in sit at opposite ends of a scale: an alleged series of planned burglaries over many months, and a single afternoon when a house was empty for perhaps an hour. In both, the people who broke in planned around what the homeowners had in place. They came from the side to avoid the front camera. They reportedly cut the power to blind the system. They used the family’s own information to know when to come.

That is why I do not treat empty homes as a lighter version of occupied ones. They are a separate problem that needs its own design: systems that report when someone tries to blind them, routines that do not depend on everyone’s discretion, a register of every property and its state, and response decisions made before the night they are needed.

For the wider picture of how this fits with home invasions, travel, staff, family offices and close protection, read our 2026 guide to high net worth security. If you would like us to review how your residences behave when nobody is home, including what happens when the power goes off, our security assessment and residential security teams can help.

Sources

About Michael Braun

Michael Braun is a former Special Unit Operator, former Manager at Gavin de Becker & Associates, and Founder & CEO of MSB Protection, an executive protection and residential security firm serving high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients.

Braun has built his career at the intersection of specialized protective operations, executive protection, residential security, protective intelligence, and security risk management. His experience spans special-unit operations, leadership within Gavin de Becker & Associates, and the development and oversight of private protection programs within demanding UHNW environments.

He has been recognized by The Top 100 Magazine as a leading CEO in the private security field and is the subject of an upcoming Marquis Who’s Who feature highlighting his leadership and contributions to the profession.

Today, Braun is recognized for his work in executive protection, UHNW estate security, residential protection, protective intelligence, adversarial security assessments, and security auditing throughout Beverly Hills and Southern California.

His work focuses on moving private security beyond simply “providing a body” and toward intelligence-led, risk-based protection programs designed to identify vulnerabilities before an adversary can exploit them.

Looking for Executive Protection or Residential Security Services?

If you are a high-net-worth or ultra-high-net-worth individual, family office, estate manager, chief of staff, or executive in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, Malibu or Southern California, MSB Protection provides executive protection, residential security, 24/7 protection, protective intelligence, medical-readiness planning, and security risk management.

We evaluate the complete security environment, from threat exposure and residential vulnerabilities to personnel, technology, procedures, protective intelligence, and emergency response, and build a program around the risks that actually exist.

Contact us for a confidential consultation or message us at +1 (805) 285-2807.

High Net Worth Security for Empty Homes and Second Homes