i agree, but I'd also check the local crime stats.

I assure you that upscale homes in TN do NOT have burgler bars. Big houses in declining neighborhoods have burgler bars. If a neighborhood has those, it is high crime and is not considered upscale no matter how nice a house may be remaining in it's middle.

Upscale homes have fences and security systems if they are in a fringe neighborhood. Or their own neighborhood security patrols. Like South Bluffs right on the river in Memphis where Cybill Shepherd and Isaac Tigrett live. They have a gated community with security patrols because it's about a mile from a housing project. No burgler bars.

I would never live in a house with burgler bars just due to the fire safety hazard they represent. To my knowledge, there are no quick release burgler bars on the market...

I want to be able to GET OUT if I need to. I'd find a different option to keep people out/prosecute those who enter, if needed (security cameras, etc).

Yikes!

My mother has that type of front door at her main house. Why? Because she can and it makes no sense at all.

I also would never have them, but I do believe there are safety release latches on the inside for emergency escape.

In our state most cities require burglar bars to have emergency releases on the inside. You see them occasionally, primarily in homes that have not turned over in the last 20 years--anything that's sold since then typically has a security system instead. I suspect in most cases, it's older homeowners who don't want to put in a security system that may seem complicated/expensive, but still want a sense of physical security. Our house definitely had them in the 70s and 80s, since you can see where the holes were filled on some of the doors and windows, but they were replaced with an alarm system in the mid-90s by a previous owner. I agree that this either indicates a current or past crime problem. (In some areas of our city where crime has improved a lot, you can pretty much pick out the houses where someone has lived for 25+ years by the security bars--it's the first thing any realtor takes off when getting a house ready for sale!)

Since I live in the area you're checking into, e-mail me listings and I'll tell you if the area is high crime.

When I see a lot of houses in an area with burglar bars, I also think crime. But when I see just one house out of many, I think paranoid.

That said, there is one house in our neighborhood with burglar bars. I wouldn't call these people paranoid exactly, but they were robbed and put up the bars after that. They did tell everyone they knew that they were going to be gone for a week, and it's the only house within 2 miles of us that I know of that has been robbed.

Just because there are bars, doesn't necessarily mean the neighborhood is high crime now.

there are many homes with decorative ironwork in my area -- both for security reasons and for style reasons. Most of these are decades old, and if there was a lot of crime in the area at that time, there isn't now. New homes and neighborhoods don't have them. (We live in supposedly one of the safest cities in the nation -- but that stat doesn't necessarily address crimes against property).