Boarding up options/experiences/costs

[Anthony Thompson]

I'm going to be closing on a vacant property in a tougher area soon and besides putting an alarm system in, we're also looking into options for boarding it up.

There's the classic plywood option of course, which is almost certainly the cheapest but also looks awful and advertises "vacant/abandoned property".

In the last few years it seems like a few other options have come up:

• VPS (vps360.com) steel door & window coverings
• SecureView (secureviewusa.com) clear boarding, used by FNMA
• InvisiBoard (products.cyprexx.com/InvisiBoard)
• Dawgs (dawgsinc.com) steel and clear boarding

I know I've seen a few VPS protected properties around in my area. I haven't seen any clear boarding that I can recall, but then again it seems like it's designed to be less visible/obvious.

Just wondering if anyone has any experiences with any of these non-plywood boarding up methods and would be willing to share their thoughts about ease of installation/removal, cost, etc.

(I searched the forums for existing posts and didn't find too much, other than a few posts saying DAWGS might be more expensive compared to other options like VPS.)