Berkley, Michigan
Looking for a Berkley home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Berkley, seven days a week. Home inspection reports come back in 24 hours.
Schedule your inspectionCall 734-331-3269
Services
For buyers, sellers, and homeowners keeping an eye on the place they already own. On new construction we also do pre-drywall inspections and 11-month builder’s warranty inspections. Our certified inspectors walk every major system in your Berkley home and tell you plainly what they found — then put it in a photo-rich digital report within 24 hours.
Following the InterNACHI Standards of Practice:
Included free with every home buyer inspection— and none of them require us to sell your information.
SatisfactionIf you are unhappy with your inspector on the day of the inspection, before you have seen your report, tell us and we will make it right — or you owe us nothing.
30-Day WarrantyA free 30-day Guard home warranty trial, negotiated for you with no obligation. Activate it whenever you are ready.
$100 OffThe buyer’s protection guarantee: if the first home we inspect for you does not make it to the closing table, for any reason, we take $100 off any further home buyer inspection within 30 days of the original.
Optional services at an additional cost — not part of a standard inspection. Tap one to see what it covers.
A camera down the main sewer line, watching its condition from the inside — roots, breaks, bellies and blockages no visual inspection can find. More about sewer scope inspections
The wood-destroying organism report VA buyers are typically asked to provide, on the federal NPMA-33 form. Carried out during the same visit. More about Veterans WDO inspections
Up to five air samples sent to an accredited laboratory, added to the same appointment rather than booked as a second visit. More about mold inspection and testing
View a sample report
Offices, retail, multifamily and warehouses in Berkley and across Oakland County. Know what condition a building is in before you sign — or stay ahead of problems in the one you already own. Reports in 24 to 72 hours depending on size.
Following the CCPIA commercial standards:
Commonly added to a commercial inspection at additional cost.
Commercial laterals are longer, older and carry more. A camera is the only way to see the condition of the one you are buying. More about sewer scope inspections
Air samples to an accredited laboratory, which matters most in buildings that have sat empty or had a roof or plumbing leak. More about mold inspection and testing
View a sample report
Add either to a Berkley home or commercial inspection, or book it on its own. We test and we never remediate, so there is nothing to sell you on the back of a result — the number you get is just the number.
Radon measured in house on a professional continuous monitor; mold samples to an accredited laboratory:
The other things worth testing while somebody is already there.
Carried out after remediation on the treated area and the areas next to it, to confirm what was found. More about mold inspection and testing
A damp basement can have several causes, and the buried sewer line is the one a visual inspection cannot check. A scope rules it in or out. More about sewer scope inspections
View a sample reportBerkley housing stock
Berkley has roughly 7,119 housing units and about 92% of them are single-family detached. The year a house went up decides more about what an inspection turns up than almost anything else about it, which is why it is where we start rather than where we finish.
More of it dates from the 1940s than from any other decade — 2,725 homes, roughly 38% of the town. At 92% single-family it is almost entirely detached houses, so the inspection is nearly always of a whole building rather than one unit inside one.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $275,100. 85% are owner-occupied, which is high even for this area.
This is not a forecast for any one address. It is where a Berkley home inspector starts in a home of this age — and whatever we actually find, it goes in the report with photographs.
Housing figures: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2022 five-year estimates.
When Berkley was built
89% of homes here run on utility gas, and 9 still heat with oil. If yours is one of them, the tank is the thing to ask about — where it is, and whether it was ever buried. Another 75 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Berkley is the most concentrated postwar housing stock we work in. Of about 7,119 units, 2,725 were built in the 1940s — the highest share of any community we cover — with 1,857 more in the 1950s and 1,016 predating 1940. That is 5,598 homes, roughly 79% of the city, built before 1960. Around 92% is single-family detached.
A city built that fast, that long ago, in one architectural moment, has a particular inspection profile. The houses are small, well built for their day, and have now been through three or four generations of owners each making their own alterations. Very little here is original and very little is new. Almost everything is layered.
Berkley’s own rules reflect that. Two of them are unusually good for a buyer, and both concern things that are invisible after the fact: an open roof inspection on a strip and reroof, and a program that reimburses the permit fee on a backwater valve installation.
Neither is a formality. Both are the City putting effort into the parts of a house that nobody can check once the work is finished.
Before you buy
The open roof inspection
Berkley requires a permit to strip and reroof a structure, and its building permits page sets out something worth understanding: a strip and reroof requires two inspections, an open roof inspection and a final. And pictures in lieu of the open roof inspection are generally not acceptable. A reroof that is not a strip needs only a final.
The reason that matters is simple. Once new covering is on, the deck underneath is gone from view for another twenty or thirty years. Whether the sheathing was sound, whether soft or delaminated boards were replaced, whether the flashing was renewed or reused, whether the work was done over an existing layer — all of it becomes invisible the moment the last shingle goes down. An open roof inspection is the only moment anybody outside the crew gets to see it, and the City has evidently decided that photographs from the contractor are not a substitute.
For a buyer, that turns the permit record into a genuinely useful document. If a roof was stripped and replaced here, there should be a permit and there should be two inspection records against it. If there is a permit with only a final, that tells you the work was declared as a reroof rather than a strip. If there is nothing at all, that is a question.
What an inspection can do on a finished roof is report the covering and its condition, the flashings, the penetrations, the edges and the ventilation, and any evidence that a covering was laid over an older one — along with what the attic shows from underneath, where it is accessible: staining on sheathing, daylight where there should be none, insulation that has been wetted and matted, and whether bathroom and kitchen fans terminate outside or simply into the attic. On houses of this age the attic is often the most informative space in the building.
Backwater valves
A backwater valve sits in the building drain and closes if flow reverses, so that a surcharged sewer main pushes against a shut valve rather than up through the lowest fixture in your basement. Berkley encourages them, and it does so with money.
Under a City Council resolution that stands until it is rescinded, residential and commercial property owners may be eligible for reimbursement of the permit fees related to installing a backwater valve. The City is precise about the boundaries: the reimbursement does not include the purchase and installation costs of the valve itself. Permits must be obtained before the work begins, fees are reimbursed only after the work has been inspected and approved by City inspectors, requests are processed within 60 days of a completed form, and payment goes to the current property owner of record according to the City’s tax roll.
That last detail is worth reading twice if you are buying. The reimbursement follows the property owner of record, not whoever paid the plumber.
For an inspection, the practical questions are whether a valve is present, where it is, and whether it is accessible. A backwater valve needs to be reachable for cleaning — a valve buried under a finished floor with no access panel is a valve nobody will ever service. We report the sump and drainage equipment we can see, floor drains, and any access covers in a basement slab, and we note where a basement shows evidence of past water. Whether a valve was permitted, and whether the permit fee was reimbursed, is a matter of record at the Community Development Department.
A city that puts a reimbursement program in place is telling you it takes basement backups seriously. On a housing stock this old, with drains and laterals of the same vintage, that is a reasonable position for it to take — and a reasonable reason for a buyer to ask what protection a particular basement actually has.
What needs a permit
Berkley draws its permit lines in specific places, and several of them catch work people assume is exempt.
An accessory building over 200 square feet needs a building permit. Between 36 and 200 square feet it needs a certificate. Only buildings of 36 square feet or less and six feet high or less need neither. A swimming pool requires both a building permit and an electrical permit — and the City says so explicitly for storable and inflatable pools too. Any driveway replacement or change needs a zoning certificate. Utility permits cover any water or sewer connection or repair work. Fences are not permitted in the front yard, and the finished side of a privacy fence must face the neighboring property.
That last one is worth a moment on a small-lot city. A fence turned the wrong way round is a visible, permanent, and slightly awkward thing to inherit.
Homeowners can pull their own trade permits with a homeowner’s affidavit, and anyone pulling a permit on a contractor’s behalf needs a letter of authorization. Permit fees are formula-based rather than negotiated: they are calculated from Class C construction costs in the Tax Assessment Manual used by the Oakland County Equalization Department, with the current county multiplier set by the Michigan State Tax Commission. The City also publishes a Homeowner’s Guide to Permits for people working on their own houses.
On scheduling: inspection requests go by email and must be in by 3pm to make the following day’s list, carrying the permit number, address, requested day or timeframe, type of inspection, an on-site contact name and phone number, and the lockbox code where there is one. Trade windows are narrow — plumbing on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the morning, electrical and mechanical on Mondays and Wednesdays at different times of day — and the City is upfront that inspections are timeframes rather than appointments.
For a buyer, the value in all this is that the permit file for a Berkley house should be unusually complete. Small work needs paperwork here, so gaps in the record are more meaningful than they would be somewhere with higher thresholds. A buyer’s inspection covers the roof, structure, foundation, drainage, electrical, heating and cooling, plumbing and the accessible interior, and reports what the building actually shows — which is the other half of the picture.
The buried line
The lateral running from a Berkley house to the sewer main was, for most of the city, laid in the 1940s or 1950s along with everything else. Eighty years later it is the one component no visual inspection reaches.
That is long enough for roots to have found a joint, for ground movement to have displaced a section, or for a repair to have been made that nobody now remembers. It is also long enough for the street trees planted when the neighborhood went up to have reached full size directly over the line. We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what Berkley laterals are generally made of.
It is the same subject as the backwater valve, approached from the other end. A valve protects the basement when the main surcharges. It does nothing about a blockage in your own lateral — and on a pipe of this age, that is the more common problem of the two.
A sewer camera inspection records what is actually inside the line: roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages where they exist, and a clear run where they do not. It is added to the same visit rather than booked separately. Alongside it, radon testing or mold inspection and testing can be added, and commercial building inspections follow the CCPIA standard for offices, retail, multifamily and warehouse property. Get in touch to talk through a particular property.
Local information from City of Berkley — building permits, inspections and permit thresholds · City of Berkley — backwater valve permit fee reimbursement request · City of Berkley — Homeowner’s Guide to Permits. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Radon in Oakland County
Zone 2 is the middle EPA category — the predicted average indoor level across the county sits between 2 and 4 pCi/L. What a zone cannot tell you is anything about one house: 29% of tests actually run in Oakland County still came back at or above the EPA’s 4 pCi/L action level. The zone describes a county. The only result that describes your basement is the one measured in it.
We place a continuous monitor for 48 hours and read the result on site — no mail-in kit, no lab wait. How radon testing works · Oakland County radon and inspection coverage
Zone from the EPA Map of Radon Zones. Elevated-result share from the Michigan Indoor Radon Program.
Why choose us
Five reasons people here pick us as their Berkley home inspector.
Family owned since 2009, more than 16,000 inspections completed and over 2,000 five-star reviews across Michigan. We also handle home buyer inspections, commercial building inspections, mold testing and radon testing.
We do not sell mold remediation or radon mitigation, so there is nothing to gain from a result that comes back bad. The number you get is just the number.
Radon, mold, sewer scope and wood-destroying organism inspections go on the same appointment as the home inspection rather than costing you a second morning.
Most people do, and it is the most useful hour of the whole purchase. Ask anything while we are standing in front of it.
InterNACHI and CCPIA certified, with four Certified Master Inspectors and National Home Inspector Examination passes on the team — none of which Michigan requires. The standards we inspect to are published and you can hold the work against them.
Including weekends, because inspection windows sit on closing dates and closing dates do not care what day it is.
Reviews
I recently hired Trademark for a full home inspection on a new purchase, including sewer scope and radon testing. It was a phenomenal experience from beginning to end. Our inspector, Mitch, did a fantastic job explaining all the findings, and the digital report with photos and videos was superb. Would definitely recommend without hesitation.
Salina HamiltonOak Park, MIWe had Mitch inspect our prospective house and he was amazing. He was thorough, patient to answer my questions and provide feedback on what areas he would recommend having a follow up expert and why. The office was responsive and I was able to book multiple services to be done in the same visit (inspection, radon test, sewer scope).
Chris PlaweckiOak Park, MIExcellent sums up the entire experience, from the initial call to set up the appointment with staff that was informative and helpful, up until the actual inspection that was very professional and thorough with any and all questions I had answered. I would highly recommend Trademark to anyone who needs inspection services. Thanks again Curt, my inspector, for an excellent job.
Johnny Thomas JrSouthfield, MIWhat happens
Questions
It is an inspection of the bare deck after the old covering has been stripped and before the new one goes on. Berkley requires two inspections on a strip and reroof — an open roof and a final — and states that pictures in lieu of the open roof inspection are generally not acceptable. It matters because once the new covering is down, the condition of the sheathing underneath is invisible for another twenty or thirty years. For a buyer, it also means the permit record for a re-roofed house here should show two inspections rather than one.
Worth establishing, and Berkley makes it easier than most cities do. Under a City Council resolution, residential and commercial property owners may be eligible for reimbursement of the permit fees on a backwater valve installation — though the City is clear the reimbursement does not cover the purchase or installation of the valve itself. On an inspection we report the drainage equipment and access covers we can see; whether a valve was permitted is a matter of record at the Community Development Department.
It sits in the building drain and closes if flow reverses, so a surcharged sewer main pushes against a shut valve rather than up through the lowest fixture in the basement. It needs to stay accessible for cleaning — a valve buried under a finished floor with no access panel is one nobody will ever service. And it does nothing about a blockage in your own lateral, which on housing this old is the more common problem.
Older, and more uniformly so, than almost anywhere else we work. Of about 7,119 housing units, 2,725 were built in the 1940s — the highest 1940s share of any community we cover — with 1,857 from the 1950s and 1,016 predating 1940. That is roughly 79% of the city built before 1960, and around 92% is single-family detached. Expect layered alterations and mixed-era systems behind newer finishes.
Very likely. An accessory building over 200 square feet needs a building permit, and between 36 and 200 square feet it needs a certificate; only buildings of 36 square feet or less and six feet or lower need neither. A swimming pool needs both a building permit and an electrical permit, and the City says so explicitly for storable and inflatable pools. Any driveway replacement or change needs a zoning certificate.
The finished side of a privacy fence must face the neighboring property, and fences are not permitted in the front yard at all. On small lots this is more visible than it sounds, and it is a permanent thing to inherit if a previous owner got it wrong.
By formula rather than negotiation. The City calculates them from Class C construction costs in the Tax Assessment Manual used by the Oakland County Equalization Department, applying the current county multiplier set by the Michigan State Tax Commission. Plan review fees must be paid before review begins, and the City notes final review fees may be higher once the construction cost is confirmed.
On housing this old, yes. For most of the city the lateral was laid in the 1940s or 1950s with the house, and street trees planted at the same time have had eighty years to reach the line. We will not guess a material from a build year. Putting a camera down the line documents roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages where they exist, and is added to the same appointment. It answers a different question from a backwater valve, and the two are worth thinking about together.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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Permits, assessing and property records for Berkley are handled by Berkley, Michigan, not by us.
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