Yeah this has been a thing for years in the UK. Myself and my wife put our keys into a metal lunch box in the hallway which mitigates this problem, which was prompted by both next door neighbours getting their cars broken into.
Exactly. Luckily i've got a Kia which nobody wanted to steal, but it's definitely a well known attack vector. A car on one side got stolen, the other side 'just' had stuff stolen from it.
Wait until bad weather. I had an utterly clapped-out Jeep Cherokee stolen one cold-as-hell winter night. Sure enough, found two neighborhoods over... a fair walking distance from where the last late night bus would have dropped someone off. So, yeah, a stolen beater is just fine when it's freezing cold outside...
Good point. We've got a new (year old) Kia Ceed, and a 15 year old Ford Focus. I'd imagine if somebody needed a ride they'd just take the Focus. Either way we've got the cameras outside which, along with the fact we don't have a Jaguar or a BMW outside probably makes us less likely to be turned over.