Home Security in Raleigh: Burglary Rates, False Alarm Rules, and Costs

Burglary and property crime in Raleigh

The Raleigh Police Department reports to the FBI through NIBRS. Summing the monthly counts in the FBI's Crime Data Explorer, it reported 1,363 burglaries in 2024 and 1,529 in 2025, a 12 percent rise. Total property crime (burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, arson) moved the other way, down 15 percent from 13,854 offenses to 11,728.

Raleigh went from about 1.2 times the national burglary rate in 2024 to about 1.5 times in 2025, because local burglaries rose while the national rate in the same data fell about 16 percent. Property crime overall ran roughly 2,310 per 100,000 in 2025 against roughly 1,550 nationally.

Three caveats apply. NIBRS burglary includes commercial break-ins as well as residential ones, and the 2025 figures are provisional and can be revised in later FBI releases. The 2025 total also includes an unusually high August, 227 burglaries against 85 to 171 in every other month of the year.

Raleigh's false alarm ordinance and fines

Raleigh regulates alarms under Part 13, Chapter 4 of its Code of Ordinances (sections 13-4001 to 13-4011), in effect since September 1, 2004. The city's false alarm page is run jointly by Police and Fire. The ordinance contains no alarm-user registration or permit requirement and no permit fee that we could find; it regulates through fines and duties instead. Alarm companies operating in Raleigh must hold a license from the North Carolina Alarm Systems Licensing Board.

Fines are counted per fiscal year (July through June), as of October 2026:

An alarm is not counted as false if it was caused by severe weather or a power failure you did not cause, a natural disaster, vandalism that physically damaged the property, an attempted entry that left visible evidence, or a test by an alarm company employee on site. If the alarm company cancels the dispatch before the officer arrives, there is no fine.

Payment is due within 30 days or a $25 late fee is added (as of October 2026). Fines unpaid after 60 days can lead to suspension of police or public safety response to your alarm, and after 90 days the account goes to a collection agency. You can appeal in writing within 10 days of receiving a false alarm notice, and an appeal pauses the fine until the alarm administrator decides.

What Raleigh's ordinance requires of monitored alarm users

The ordinance puts several duties on users with monitored systems. You must direct your monitoring company to verify every alarm signal (except duress and hold-up alarms) before requesting police; Raleigh defines verifying as an attempt to contact the site by phone or other electronic means, whether or not anyone answers. You must also receive training from the alarm company before authorizing it to request dispatch, and make sure it uses the dispatch numbers the city designates.

Repeat false alarms trigger maintenance duties. After two false alarms in a year, you must have your alarm company inspect the system (the administrator can waive this if the cause was not equipment). After four, a licensed alarm company must modify the system to be more false alarm resistant or provide additional user training. The city's false alarm notices must state that response may be suspended after the eighth false alarm. Reinstatement after a suspension requires paying the fines, certifying the system was inspected and repaired, and certifying you know how to use it.

Two hardware rules are worth knowing before you buy: an exterior siren may sound for no more than 10 minutes (15 for systems under UL standards 365 or 609), and automatic voice dialers that call police with a recorded message are not allowed. What happens when an alarm goes off covers the general dispatch chain.

What home security costs in Raleigh

With no registration fee in the ordinance that we could find, the city-imposed costs are the false alarm fines above and any late fees, which makes false alarm prevention the main local cost lever. A household that keeps to one false alarm a fiscal year pays the city nothing.

Equipment and monitoring are priced nationally. Home security cost per month breaks down the full annual cost, and cheapest professional monitoring compares the budget monitored options by published pricing. For quotes on monitored service at a Raleigh address, our questionnaire at /quote fetches them from monitoring providers.

A sensible setup for a Raleigh home

Harden the entry points first: deadbolts and reinforced strike plates on exterior doors, locks on ground-floor windows and sliding doors, and lighting at entrances. Then add sensors on every ground-floor opening, interior motion coverage, and a siren set to stop within the city's 10-minute limit.

Design around Raleigh's cancellation rule. A dispatch the alarm company cancels before an officer arrives costs nothing. Make sure everyone who uses the system knows the code and answers the monitoring company's call, keep your contact list current, and use pet-friendly motion sensors if you have animals. In an apartment, the ordinance treats each unit as its own alarm site and the tenant as the user responsible for false alarms; home security for renters covers setups that suit a lease.

Nearby cities

The same breakdown of burglary data and local alarm rules for the nearest cities we cover: home security in Charlotte, home security in Baltimore and home security in Philadelphia.

For a national frame of reference, compare burglary rates in the 15 largest US cities, built from FBI agency data.