Grosse Pointe, Michigan
Looking for a Grosse Pointe home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Grosse Pointe, 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 Grosse Pointe 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 Grosse Pointe and across Wayne 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 Grosse Pointe 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 reportGrosse Pointe housing stock
Grosse Pointe has roughly 2,463 housing units and about 70% 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 years before 1940 than from any other decade — 1,542 homes, roughly 63% of the town.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $379,400. 86% are owner-occupied, which is high even for this area.
This is not a forecast for any one address. It is where a Grosse Pointe 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 Grosse Pointe was built
92% of homes here run on utility gas, and 8 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 33 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
The City of Grosse Pointe has the oldest housing stock of any community we cover. Of roughly 2,463 units, 1,542 — 63% — were built before 1940, and 88% of everything in the city predates 1960. Barely a hundred units have been added since 1980.
The City also publishes something remarkable: a thirty-seven item inspection checklist for its certificate of occupancy, with an explanation attached to every item. It covers the chimney, the roof, the gutters, the porches, the paint, the stairs, the windows, the wiring, the plumbing and the heating, and it reads very much like a home inspection.
And at the end of that document the City says something we would not dare put in our own words, so we will quote it instead. Its certificate of occupancy, checklist and inspection report do not constitute any representation or warranty as to the condition of a dwelling — and interested persons are advised and encouraged to make their own inspection of the premises in order to determine the condition.
That is the City’s position, in capitals, on its own form. A municipal inspection serves the municipality. Yours serves you.
One point of order before anything else: there are five separate Grosse Pointe municipalities — the City, the Farms, the Park, the Woods and the Shores. This page is about the City of Grosse Pointe, and the rules described here are its rules.
Before you buy
The City checklist
The City’s certificate of occupancy checklist is worth reading before you buy anything here, because it tells you what one municipality considers the minimum for a house to be occupied.
Some items are precise in a way that is genuinely useful. Smoke detectors at the top and bottom of each stair, outside each sleeping area more than ten feet from the stairwell, and in every room that could be used for sleeping on each level. Stairways with a light switch at the top and the bottom. A wall switch for the light in every habitable room. Two outlets per room, and one per wall in the living room, with ground fault protection around water sources.
Others describe exactly the findings an inspector writes up on old housing. Extension cords running from one room to another or under carpet. Pendant fixtures — bulbs hanging solely by their electrical wire — which the City says should be replaced. Water heater vent pipes that sag or connect loosely to the chimney, and whether both a pressure relief valve and an overflow pipe are present. Vacuum breakers where cross connections exist, including on lawn irrigation. Chimney clean-outs that exist and have actually been cleaned out.
A couple are unexpectedly permissive. Screens and storm windows are not required, and the City notes that windows need not open where a room has adequate ventilation by other means. And on outlets it says openly that judgments are made on the amount of hazardous use in evidence, which is a more honest description of how inspection works than most codes manage.
The City is equally straight about its limits. Some items are impracticable to inspect — it names the interiors of furnaces and hot water tanks, and footings — and controls generally cannot be tested under normal operating conditions, so inspection is limited to visual observation of general condition.
Those are our limits too, almost word for word. A buyer’s inspection is a visual, non-invasive examination of the accessible parts of a building, and anyone promising more than that is overselling.
Electrical grounding
This is the single most important thing on the City’s website for anyone buying an old house here, and it appears in a place most people would never look — at the bottom of the lead service line replacement page.
The City warns that some homes may still rely on grounding their electrical system to their water pipes. It states that ensuring the electrical system has a proper and independent ground is the property owner’s responsibility, strongly recommends consulting a licensed electrician where a house still uses the water line as its main grounding source, and calls it a critical safety issue, noting that an ungrounded electrical system poses a significant risk of electric shock or fire.
The reason it sits on that page is the connection between the two things. For most of the twentieth century, a metal water service entering the basement was a perfectly ordinary grounding path. Replace that metal line — as the City is doing, address by address — and unless a proper grounding electrode is in place, that path can be gone.
In a city where 63% of the houses predate 1940, this is not a marginal concern. Grounding and bonding is one of the things we look at on every inspection: how the service is grounded, whether there is a grounding electrode and whether it is connected, whether the water piping is bonded, and whether anything about the arrangement suggests it was disturbed by later work.
We report what we can see and describe it plainly. We are not electricians and we do not carry out the remedial work — but knowing which category a house falls into before you own it is exactly the point.
Lead service lines
The City’s stated goal is to have all lead services replaced in line with the federal rule requiring cities to complete lead service line replacements within ten years, which Michigan is expected to adopt.
It sets out three circumstances in which it will replace a lead service line at no cost: where there is a leak on the lead line, where the home falls within the limits of a city construction project, and during a lead service line replacement program. Tenants and owners are notified by letter, door hanger or telephone, and the City publishes a replacement map searchable by address showing whether a home is scheduled within the next two years.
If you are buying here, that map is worth ten minutes before you write an offer. A property already scheduled for a no-cost replacement is in a different position from one that is not, and it is a question the City can answer directly.
We do not test water and we do not determine what a buried service line is made of. What we report is the visible supply piping inside the building where it is accessible, the materials we can actually see, and any point where the material changes or a repair has been made. On a house of this age that is genuinely informative, because interior plumbing here has usually been replaced in stages and the joins tell you when.
Water testing goes through a certified laboratory, and questions about the service line and the replacement schedule go to the City.
A prewar city
When almost two thirds of a city was built before 1940 and almost nothing has been added since 1980, the inspection becomes an exercise in reading history rather than checking a build.
Electrical shows it first, and the City’s own checklist confirms what turns up: open fusing, improperly spliced cable, double-tapped circuits, extension cords doing the job of wiring, and pendant fixtures still in service. Most houses have had a service upgrade, but upgrades range from a genuine rewire to a new panel with original distribution behind it, and coherence matters more than date.
Plumbing follows the same pattern: supply lines replaced in part, leaving material transitions worth examining, and drain and vent layouts frequently original with newer fixtures hung off them. The checklist’s attention to fixture venting and to vent stack seals at the roof is well placed on housing of this age.
Then the envelope and the structure. Chimneys with deteriorated tops and mortar joints. Gutters pulling away from fascia. Wood porches with deteriorated decking and railings, and concrete porches that have settled or tipped. Roofs on their fourth or fifth covering. Foundations and basements that have had ninety years to meet water — and the City’s checklist asks specifically about evidence of excessive current leaking or foundation failure.
None of this makes a prewar Grosse Pointe house a poor buy. A great many are exceptionally well built and have been carefully kept. But the difference between a well-maintained one and a neglected one is not visible from the street, and establishing which one you are looking at is most of what you are paying an inspector to do.
The buried line
The sanitary line from the building to the main belongs to the owner. On a house here it was very often laid before 1940, under a street with mature trees on both sides that have had ninety years to find it.
We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what Grosse Pointe laterals are generally made of, and a guess in a report is worse than no statement at all.
What a camera settles is the one thing no visual inspection and no municipal checklist reaches inside: roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages where they exist, and a clear run where they do not. On housing this old it is among the most useful things you can buy before closing.
A sewer camera inspection is added to the same appointment rather than booked separately. Alongside it we offer radon testing, mold inspection and testing, and commercial building inspections to the CCPIA standard for offices, retail, multifamily and warehouse property.
You can read what our clients say, look through answers to common questions, or see the City’s permit applications — or simply get in touch about a specific address.
Local information from City of Grosse Pointe — inspection checklist for certificate of occupancy, with item explanations · City of Grosse Pointe — lead service line replacement program and the electrical grounding alert · City of Grosse Pointe — building permit applications. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Radon in Wayne County
Zone 3 is the lowest of the three EPA categories — the predicted average indoor level across the county is below 2 pCi/L. That puts Grosse Pointe at the calmer end of Michigan’s radon picture, which is worth saying out loud rather than glossing over. What a zone cannot tell you is anything about one house: 17% of tests actually run in Wayne County still came back at or above the EPA’s 4 pCi/L action level, which is about one in six. 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 · Wayne 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 Grosse Pointe 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
Ora from Trademark did an incredible job with the inspection and sewer scope of the home I am in the process of buying. He was very thorough, explained everything to me from the start, and made it all super easy to understand which definitely helped to put me at ease a bit more. Highly recommend this company!
Mariah HartmanWestland, MIJim was prompt and thorough during the mold testing. Clearly gave us an explanation about mold and testing process he was going to conduct. Testing was followed by a written report. I would recommend everyone use a third party to test mold, independent from the company conducting remediation work. I would hire Trademark again and strongly recommend them.
Alberto PicconeNorthville, MICowboy “Jim” just did Mold Testing in my parents’ basement. He was Professional, explained the what, how and yet of everything to my Senior parents. Our results came back super quick. He even referred us to the resources on the Trademark website for me to use to fix the leaky basement. It’s 1 stop shopping with Trademark.
Becky JohnsonWayne, MIWhat happens
Questions
The City says it does not. Its own document states that the certificate of occupancy, the checklist and the inspection report do not constitute any representation or warranty as to the condition of a dwelling, and that interested persons are advised and encouraged to make their own inspection of the premises to determine its condition.
Thirty-seven items with explanations, covering the chimney, roof, gutters, porches, paint, debris, vermin, drives and walks, stairs, handrails, windows, doors, walls, floors, the basement and general safety, then wiring and electrical, plumbing and heating. It describes itself as a guideline that is not all-inclusive.
The City’s checklist asks for smoke detectors at the top and bottom of each stair, outside each sleeping area more than ten feet from the stairwell, and inside every room that could be used for sleeping on each level, plus a carbon monoxide detector located as the manufacturer recommends and a fire extinguisher near the kitchen.
Because some homes still ground their electrical system to the water pipe. The City states that ensuring a proper and independent ground is the property owner’s responsibility, strongly recommends consulting a licensed electrician where the water line is still the main grounding source, and calls it a critical safety issue posing a significant risk of shock or fire. Replacing a metal water service can remove that path.
Yes. Grounding and bonding is part of every inspection: how the service is grounded, whether a grounding electrode is present and connected, whether the water piping is bonded, and whether the arrangement looks as though later work disturbed it. We report what we can see. We are not electricians and do not carry out the remedial work.
At no cost in three circumstances it publishes: where there is a leak on the lead service line, where the home falls within the limits of a city construction project, and during a lead service line replacement program. It notifies owners and tenants by letter, door hanger or call, and publishes a replacement map searchable by address.
Older than anywhere else we cover. About 1,542 of roughly 2,463 units predate 1940, and 88% of the city’s housing was built before 1960, with barely a hundred units added since 1980. Almost every inspection here is of a building that has been altered repeatedly over eight or nine decades.
No. There are five separate Grosse Pointe municipalities — the City, the Farms, the Park, the Woods and the Shores — each with its own government and its own rules. Everything described here is the City of Grosse Pointe, so confirm which one an address sits in before relying on any particular requirement.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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