Whoever breaks in around Frankfurt does not ring the well-secured front door. They take the garage door, the cellar window, the door from the cellar into the stairwell. These side entrances are often decades old, thinly built and worse protected than anything else on the house. That is exactly where I start, and exactly where most owners save at the wrong end.
I have advised mostly tenants and small owner communities for twelve years. And I always see the same pattern. A door worth 2000 euros at the front. A cylinder worth three euros fifty at the back. That makes no sense. A house is only as secure as its weakest door, and that door is almost never the front one.
Why the cellar and garage are the favourite target
Three reasons, and all three play into the offender's hands.
First: no line of sight. A garage door in a rear courtyard or a cellar window in a light well is seen by no neighbour. The burglar has time, no pressure, no audience. Nobody likes to work at the front door under the street lamp.
Second: cheap build. A thin door leaf, a simple profile cylinder with no protection at all, often just a padlock on the chain-link. Doors like that take no serious load. A screwdriver is enough.
Third, and this is the underrated point: the connecting door. From the garage there is almost always a door straight into the house or the stairwell. If that is open or badly secured, the expensive front door was entirely for nothing. The offender is inside without a single scratch showing at the front.
According to the trend in the police crime statistics from the BKA, home burglary remains a live issue. I will not speculate about exact figures. What I see in the field: the majority of break-ins I assess afterwards did not go through the front door. It was the window, the patio door, or the side entrance.
What actually holds, from most effective to the detail
I always work through it in the same order, because the effect per euro falls in exactly that order.
The garage-to-house connecting door first
This door is your real front door, even if it does not look like one. Treat it like one too. A full security cylinder with anti-drill and anti-pull protection, ABUS Bravus, BKS or EVVA, plus a sturdy strike plate fixed firmly into the masonry, not just into the wooden frame. A security escutcheon to DIN 18257 ES1 or better ES2 belongs to it, otherwise the whole cylinder is simply levered out.
Hands off the hardware-store kits for 25 euros with a no-name cylinder thrown in. They have no drill protection, no hardened cores, nothing. That is window dressing.
The cellar door itself
Here an extra lock, properly fitted, is often enough. A cross bar lock spans the door across its full width and secures both sides, hinge side and lock side, at once. That stops the classic levering attack that 80 percent of opportunists rely on.
If the door opens outward, hinge-side bolts or back-hook plates are a must. Otherwise the offender simply lifts the door off its hinges, and the cylinder means nothing to him. Even pros overlook that sometimes.
Cellar windows and light wells
A tilted cellar window is an open door, there is nothing to sugarcoat. Lockable window handles are the minimum. Better are fixed grilles or light-well covers screwed from the inside and secured against lifting. A simple grating lock costs little and holds a lot.
The old garage door itself
Many old up-and-over doors can be pushed open with a screwdriver at the top edge, because the locking only grips in the middle. A mechanical extra lock that engages sideways into both running rails solves that for under 100 euros. On electric doors, check whether the drive is locked against being pushed up.
Good hardware rated to DIN resistance classes, that is doors and windows to DIN EN 1627 in RC2 or RC3, lasts many times longer than hardware-store goods. Anyone who wants to tackle this systematically finds the logic behind it on our burglary protection page. If only a fitting or cylinder needs swapping, that is often a job for a lock replacement.
What it actually costs
I name prices openly, because the lack of transparency is half the problem with this topic. Here is a realistic range, material plus normal fitting in Frankfurt, as of 2026.
| Measure | Material | with fitting |
|---|---|---|
| Good security cylinder, ABUS or BKS | 60 to 150 EUR | 110 to 230 EUR |
| Cross bar lock, lockable | 100 to 250 EUR | 180 to 380 EUR |
| Security escutcheon ES1/ES2 | 40 to 120 EUR | 90 to 200 EUR |
| Hinge-side bolts per pair | 15 to 40 EUR | 60 to 120 EUR |
| Hardened shackle lock for cellar unit | 30 to 80 EUR | material only |
Anyone tackling several doors at once comes out cheaper with an on-site consultation, because the call-out is shared. The full overview is on the pricing page. And no, securing a cellar door properly does not need a night emergency call-out. That is planning, not an emergency.
Locked out and in a hurry?
Price quoted up front, vetted partner business, ~22 minutes on site.
From the field, two cases from the past year
Last year in Gallus: a family had a top-secured flat door at the front, RC2, new escutcheon, everything done right. But the door from the underground garage into the stairwell stood open like a barn gate with a cent cylinder. That is exactly where the offenders got in, without a single trace at the front door. We swapped the cylinder for an ABUS with anti-pull protection and set a new strike plate into the masonry. Less work than expected, just under 200 euros with material. It has been quiet since.
Last week in Bornheim, another classic: in the cellar of an old building the units were secured only with thin padlocks on the chain-link. Three seconds with bolt cutters, that is all it takes. The tenant had two racing bikes gone, over 4000 euros together. We recommended a hardened shackle lock of the higher class instead of the hardware-store model for three euros. Here too the old line holds: a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and in the cellar the weakest link is almost always the lock.
FAQ, the questions that come in by phone
Is it even worth it if the garage is old? Yes, especially then. The connecting door to the house costs little and brings the most. The old door itself does not need to be perfect if the way into the house is tight.
Is a camera or an alarm enough? A camera documents, it stops nobody. Mechanics stop people. Secure the door first, then think about electronics, not the other way round. I say that even when it brings less revenue.
Do I have to pay for it myself as a tenant? It depends. Pure security improvements are often the tenant's affair, but structural work on the door needs the landlord's consent. Always clear that in writing beforehand.
Especially important for tenants
If you rent, do not touch any door without checking back. Cross bars, new strike plates, holes drilled in the frame, these are structural changes, and they need the landlord's consent. Get it in writing. Often the landlord even pays part of it, because a secured cellar benefits their property too.
As for repair and normal wear, and who carries the bill in the end, that is a topic of its own. I have unpacked the details and the typical disputes in our guide on a lock change as a tenant.
In short
Secure the house from its weakest point, not its prettiest. The front door is usually already good. The garage, cellar and side entrances rarely are. The connecting door first, then the cellar door, then the windows, in that order you get the most security per euro. An honest assessment of which door is the real weak spot in your case comes via our contact page.
