Beverly Hills, Michigan
Looking for a Beverly Hills home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Beverly Hills, 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 Beverly Hills 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 Beverly Hills 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 Beverly Hills 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 reportBeverly Hills housing stock
Beverly Hills has roughly 4,401 housing units and about 94% of them are single-family detached. Housing that went up mostly in one era has mostly one era’s problems — which is genuinely useful to know before you buy, because it tells you what to look at first.
Most of it went up in the 1950s — 1,745 homes, around 40% of the town. At 94% 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 $459,500. 94% are owner-occupied, which is high even for this area.
None of this is a prediction about a particular house. It is where a Beverly Hills home inspector starts looking in a home of this age, and what we photograph and write up either way.
Housing figures: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2022 five-year estimates.
When Beverly Hills was built
89% of homes here run on utility gas. Another 48 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Read the Village’s list of what its building department issues permits for and one word stands out: culvert.
The full list runs building, concrete, culvert, electrical, fence, mechanical, plumbing, sewer and signs. A municipality that issues culvert permits is a municipality with roadside ditches — open drainage rather than curb and gutter, at least in parts — where a driveway has to cross the ditch on a pipe, and where that pipe has to be the right size and set at the right level or the water backs up.
No other community in this project lists culverts as a permit type of its own. It tells you that on some streets here, the drainage in front of a house is a visible, physical thing that can be blocked, crushed, silted up or built over — and that it is worth looking at when you view a property.
The other thing to know is how uniform the housing is. Of about 4,401 units, 1,745 were built in the 1950s and 1,290 in the 1960s, with another 386 in the 1940s. That is 78% of the Village built inside three decades, and only 163 homes added since 1999. Around 94% is single-family detached, which is about as uniformly detached as any community of this size we cover.
Before you buy
A rich permit trail
The Village’s building department names the activities people most often assume are exempt: installing a fence, building a deck, shingling a roof, replacing a furnace or a water heater, installing central air, and putting in a swimming pool.
Four of those matter more than the others when you are buying a house built in 1955. A roof has been replaced at least once and probably twice. The original furnace is long gone. The water heater has been changed several times. And central air was almost certainly added later, because houses of that era were not built with it.
Where all four need permits, the file at the Village should tell you when each of those things happened. That is genuinely valuable, because the single most useful number for judging what remains of a component’s service life is the date it went in — and a seller’s recollection is not a date.
It also means gaps mean something. A house with obviously newer shingles and no roof permit is a question worth asking, in a way it would not be in a municipality that does not permit roofs at all.
What an inspection contributes is the half no file records: the condition of what is actually there. On the roof, the covering and its condition, flashings, penetrations, edges and ventilation, and whether a covering appears to have been laid over an older one. On the mechanical side, the equipment’s apparent age and condition, its venting and combustion air where visible, and how a later air conditioning system was integrated with an older furnace and older ductwork — which is a common source of trouble in exactly this housing stock. A buyer’s inspection covers those alongside the structure, foundation, drainage, electrical, plumbing and the accessible interior.
One procedural note if you are planning work rather than buying: the Village asks that you contact the building department for site plan review and approval before submitting plans for permit issuance. That is a step ahead of the application, not part of it, and skipping it costs time.
Open drainage
Curb and gutter carries water away in a pipe under the street. An open ditch carries it in a channel you can see, and every driveway crossing that ditch needs a culvert — a pipe set at the right invert, of the right diameter, with the ends kept clear.
The system works well when it is maintained and badly when it is not, and the failure mode is shared rather than private. A culvert that has been crushed by heavy vehicles, silted up over twenty years, or replaced with something undersized does not just flood one driveway; it holds water back along the whole run and pushes it toward whoever is upstream.
That is why the Village permits them. And it is why, on a property here, the ground at the front is worth a proper look rather than a glance: whether there is a ditch, whether the culvert ends are visible and open, whether the ditch line has been filled or regraded, and whether water has obviously been standing.
On an inspection we report accessible grading and which way the ground actually falls, low spots and evidence of standing water, gutters and downspouts and where they discharge, foundation conditions, and the basement or crawlspace and what it shows about past water. Where a culvert or a ditch is visible we note its apparent condition. What we cannot do is tell you the condition of the inside of a buried culvert along its length — that is the same problem as the sewer lateral, and the Village is the right office to ask about the drainage on a particular street.
The Village also publishes stormwater information and links material on flooding in the Rouge River watershed, which is the system this drainage ultimately feeds.
Letting, and the handover
If you are buying here to let, the requirement is stricter than a registration. The Village states that it is the duty of every landlord to acquire a landlord license from the building department before allowing any person to occupy a rental unit — and it says explicitly that this includes a single family home. A separate license is required for each property, and once granted it is valid for two years.
The wording matters. The license gates occupancy, not merely the advertising or the tenancy agreement, and the Village employs a building and rental inspector to go with it. Buying a tenanted property, or one you intend to tenant, means confirming the license position before closing rather than after.
On the ordinary handover, the Village’s water FAQ is refreshingly clear. Bills go to “Resident” rather than a named person, and residential water service is typically not shut off unless the previous owner asks for it — so a new owner generally does not need to transfer anything. What should happen is that the previous owner schedules a final meter reading at closing, after which billing continues automatically to the new resident.
Two practical points follow. A final reading takes two to three business days to schedule and the final bill arrives about a week after that, so it needs starting before the closing rather than on the day. And a buyer can simply call the Water Department to confirm whether a final reading was actually requested — which is worth doing, because an unresolved account is far easier to sort out before the keys change hands.
For a sewer backup, the Village directs residents to the Water and Sewer Department in business hours and to the non-emergency police line after hours, where on-call personnel are contacted.
The buried line
The Village issues sewer permits as their own category, which tells you the connection between a house and the main is treated as a real piece of work here. It is also the one component no visual inspection reaches.
On a 1950s house — the largest single slice of this village at 1,745 units — that lateral has been in the ground seventy years. On a 1960s house, sixty. The mature trees that give these streets their character were planted at about the same time, and their roots have had exactly as long to find a joint.
That is also long enough for ground movement to displace a section, or for a repair to have been made that nobody now remembers. We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what Beverly Hills laterals are generally made of.
It is the second buried pipe on a property here that nobody can see, the first being the driveway culvert. One of them the Village will discuss with you. The other is entirely yours.
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, commercial building inspections follow the CCPIA standard for offices, retail, multifamily and warehouse property, and radon testing or mold inspection and testing can be added to a residential or commercial visit. Get in touch to talk through a particular property.
Local information from Village of Beverly Hills — Building Department, permits and inspections · Village of Beverly Hills — rental properties and landlord licensing · Village of Beverly Hills — water department frequently asked questions. 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. A zone is a prediction of an average, and nobody lives in an average.
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 Beverly Hills 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
Because parts of Beverly Hills have open roadside ditches rather than curb and gutter, and every driveway crossing a ditch needs a culvert of the right size set at the right level. It is the only community in this project that lists culverts as a permit type of its own. On a property with a ditch out front, whether the culvert ends are clear and the ditch line has not been filled or regraded is worth looking at.
More than most people expect. The Village names installing a fence, building a deck, shingling a roof, replacing a furnace or water heater, installing central air and installing a swimming pool. It issues permits for building, concrete, culvert, electrical, fence, mechanical, plumbing, sewer and signs. On a village where 78% of the housing was built between 1940 and 1969, most properties should have a documented history of those replacements.
That the permit file is worth searching, and that gaps in it carry weight. The date a roof, furnace, water heater or air conditioning system went in is the single most useful number for judging what is left of its service life, and here that date should exist on record rather than in a seller’s memory.
A landlord license from the building department, obtained before allowing any person to occupy the unit — and the Village states this includes a single family home. A separate license is required for each property and it is valid for two years. The license gates occupancy, so confirm the position before closing on a property you intend to let.
Generally no. The Village sends bills to “Resident” rather than a named person and does not normally shut service off unless the previous owner requests it. What should happen is that the seller schedules a final meter reading at closing and billing continues automatically to you. Allow two to three business days to schedule that reading and about a week for the final bill — and you can call the Water Department to confirm the reading was actually requested.
The Water and Sewer Department during business hours. After hours, the Village directs residents to the non-emergency police number, and on-call personnel are contacted from there.
Concentrated in the postwar decades. Of about 4,401 housing units, 1,745 were built in the 1950s and 1,290 in the 1960s, with 386 more in the 1940s — 78% of the Village inside three decades — and only 163 built since 1999. Around 94% is single-family detached. Expect original structure behind several generations of replacements.
Yes. On a 1950s house the lateral has been in the ground seventy years, and the mature trees that give these streets their character were planted at about the same time. 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.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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