Security and CCTV

What actually goes wrong in an empty property

Owners install cameras expecting intruders. What the cameras usually record is weather.

• Storm damage. Winter storms take furniture, umbrellas, pergola fabric and anything loose on a terrace, and they drive rain into places it does not reach in summer.
• Water. A failed seal, a blocked outlet or a burst pipe running unnoticed for weeks. See smart home for leak detection, which addresses this far better than a camera.
• Damp and mould. A closed building with no ventilation through a damp winter, which is a slow failure nobody sees until spring.
• Small deterioration compounding. A cracked tile lets water in, which lifts more tiles, which lets more water in.
• Intrusion, which does happen and is the least likely of these.

A sensible package is therefore cameras plus environmental monitoring plus somebody physically checking the property. Cameras alone show you the damage; they do not prevent it.

Equipment that survives here

• External housings and brackets in appropriate materials — a camera bracket streaking rust down a whitewashed wall is a very common sight and entirely avoidable.
• Mounting rated for wind, on structure, not on a render finish.
• Cable routed and protected, not clipped along an exposed wall where UV will destroy the sheath.
• Equipment that tolerates the temperature range on a wall in full sun, which is beyond many domestic specifications.
• Battery backup, so a power cut does not blind the system for the duration of exactly the storm you wanted to watch.
• Local recording as well as cloud, so a connectivity loss does not mean no record.

The legal side, which matters for rentals

Cameras that record beyond the boundary of your own property — a shared lane, a neighbour's terrace, a public path — bring you within data-protection obligations under the GDPR as applied in Greece. For a rental property recording guests, the obligations are more significant again.

• Cameras positioned to cover your own property, not the neighbour's or the lane, and masked where the field of view unavoidably extends.
• No cameras in private areas of a rental — interiors, terraces in private use, and certainly nothing in bedrooms or bathrooms.
• Clear signage where recording takes place, and disclosure to guests.
• A retention period, applied, rather than indefinite storage.

What this covers

• CCTV with local and remote recording, specified for the exposure.
• Alarm systems with remote notification and battery backup.
• Access control and keyless entry, coordinated with smart home.
• Environmental monitoring — water, humidity, temperature and power — which for an empty property is the part that actually saves money.
• Physical security: gates, grilles, and door and window hardware. See metalwork.
• Integration with a property-checking schedule, because a system nobody responds to is a recording device rather than security. See property maintenance.