Chelsea, Michigan
Looking for a Chelsea home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Chelsea, 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 Chelsea 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 Chelsea and across Washtenaw 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 Chelsea 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 reportChelsea housing stock
Chelsea has roughly 2,681 housing units and about 64% of them are single-family detached. Homes built in a single stretch tend to wear out in the same places at the same time. That is why when somewhere was built is the first thing worth knowing about it.
The busiest stretch of building here was the years before 1940: 852 homes, about 32% of everything standing today.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $289,200.
None of this says anything about the specific house you are buying. It is the shortlist a Chelsea home inspector works through in a home of this age, and every item on it gets photographed and written up whichever way it turns out.
Housing figures: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2022 five-year estimates.
When Chelsea was built
88% of homes here run on utility gas. Another 33 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Chelsea sells its own electricity. The City provides electric, water and sewer service to residents and businesses, publishes its own electric rate schedules, and files its own plans with the state public service commission. Natural gas comes from DTE; everything else on the pole belongs to the City.
Very few communities in Michigan run their own electric utility, and none of the others we cover do. It changes small practical things — who you call, whose crew turns up, where rebate programs come from — and it sits alongside a housing stock where a great many houses were wired a very long time ago.
Of roughly 2,681 units here, 852 predate 1940. That is about 32% of the city, and it means that on a typical Chelsea house the electrical system has been extended, upgraded and worked on repeatedly across eighty-five years or more.
The other local arrangement worth knowing is that the police department carries a good deal of the load. Code enforcement is provided through the Chelsea Police Department, and after-hours electric outages and water main breaks are reported to the police as well.
Behind the prewar core sits a much more recent layer: 374 units from the 1990s and 400 from the 2000s. Those are two very different inspections, and knowing which one you are looking at before you walk the property is half the preparation.
Before you buy
Electrical
On a prewar house the electrical system is almost always the most interesting part of the inspection, because it is the system that has had to change the most.
A house wired in the 1920s or 1930s was wired for lighting and very little else. Nearly all have had a service upgrade since, but upgrades vary enormously: a genuine rewire is a different proposition from a new panel and meter with original distribution still running behind it. Circuits added in stages by different hands, mixed generations of wiring meeting in one box, junctions in places nobody can reach, and older controls still in service are all common findings on housing of this age.
What matters is not the age but the coherence and quality of what has been done since, and that is visible to somebody looking properly. We inspect and report on the service entrance and its condition, the panel and what is inside it, grounding and bonding where accessible, and the accessible branch circuit wiring, outlets, switches and fixtures.
What we do not touch is the utility side. The service drop or lateral, the meter and the equipment beyond it belong to the City’s utility department here rather than to an investor-owned company, which in practice means the number to call about anything on that side is a local one.
The City also publishes rebate and incentive information alongside its rates, and filed an application for a renewable energy plan with the state in early 2025. For an owner of an old house those programs are worth a look, because the work they tend to reward — insulation, air sealing, efficient equipment — is the same work an inspection report usually points toward on a building of that vintage.
Outages and breaks
The City asks residents to report both electric outages and water main breaks to the same place: the City offices during business hours, and the police department after hours. There is a recorded status line for known outages, and the electric department publishes an outage tip sheet.
Gas is the exception and goes to DTE, and phone and cable to the relevant provider. That is worth knowing on the night it matters.
For a buyer the practical question behind all of this is what a power cut actually does to a particular house. If there is a sump pump, it stops. On a prewar house with a below-grade basement that is not a theoretical concern, and it is the reason battery or water-powered backup pumps exist.
On an inspection we report the sump arrangement as we find it: whether there is a pit and a pump, whether a backup exists and what kind, where the discharge goes, and what the basement and foundation show about water that has been there before. We do not predict what a particular storm or a particular outage will do, because nobody honestly can.
We also report the drainage that decides how hard the pump has to work in the first place — the fall of the ground around the building, the condition of the gutters, and where the downspouts terminate. On an eighty-five year old house those are almost always where the improvement is.
Drains
Chelsea runs a grease reduction program because fats, oils and grease have shown up in its collection pipes and at its wastewater treatment plant, where they hamper treatment and reduce the capacity of the sewer lines.
Its guidance is refreshingly practical and organized by what is actually in your kitchen. Waste oil from a deep fryer goes into a container, and the fryer gets wiped with paper towels that go out with the solid waste, before anything is washed. Drip pans from a grill or roaster get emptied and wiped. Greasy pans from gravy, bacon and sauces get wiped before washing. Frosting containers and butter utensils get pre-scraped.
The principle throughout is wipe first, wash second, and the reason it matters to a homeowner rather than only to the City is that the first pipe grease meets is your own. The lateral running from the building to the main belongs to the property owner, and grease that congeals in a cold buried pipe does so on your side of the boundary long before it reaches the City’s.
On a house whose lateral was laid before 1940, that pipe has had ninety years of everything that has gone down it. Add mature street trees looking for water, and the two problems compound: roots find a joint, grease catches on the roots, and what was a slight restriction becomes a blockage.
We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what Chelsea laterals are generally made of, and a guess in a report is worse than no statement at all.
Two eras
With 852 units predating 1940 and 774 built between 1990 and 2009, most inspections here fall into one of two patterns.
On the older house the work is reading accumulated alteration. Beyond the electrical, that means plumbing renewed in part rather than in whole with material transitions worth examining; insulation and ventilation retrofitted into a building designed without either; heating added and replaced, sometimes vented into a chimney never intended for it; a roof on its fourth or fifth covering; and a foundation that has had a very long time to meet water.
On the newer house the questions are about the first round of turnover. Original roofs are gone or overdue. The first generation of furnaces, water heaters and air conditioning has generally been replaced once, with variable care and occasionally with venting that has not kept pace with the appliance. Window seals, caulking and exterior finishes are at the stage where deferred maintenance starts to show. Grading has settled since the build.
Decks deserve a closer look on houses of that period, particularly the ledger connection and its flashing, and the fasteners themselves.
About 36% of the housing in the city is something other than a detached house. On a condominium the association documents decide where your responsibility ends and the association’s begins, and they are worth reading before closing. For a small multi-unit building bought as an investment, a commercial inspection to the CCPIA standard is usually the right scope.
What we do
A buyer’s inspection covers the roof, structure, foundation, drainage, electrical, heating and cooling, plumbing and the accessible interior, and reports the condition and apparent function of each. On a Chelsea house that ranges from a building older than the electric utility that serves it to one built in the last twenty years, so the emphasis moves considerably from one property to the next.
A sewer camera inspection records what is actually inside the buried line: roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages where they exist, and a clear run where they do not. On a prewar house it is among the most useful things you can buy before closing, and it is added to the same appointment rather than booked separately.
Radon testing and mold inspection and testing can be added to a residential or commercial visit, and are worth considering where a basement shows a history of moisture or where the property has stood empty.
We are not a code inspection and we do not issue citations. Code enforcement in this city runs through the police department, and it is complaint-driven — which means an absence of enforcement history on a property tells you nobody complained, not that anybody looked.
You can read what our clients say, look through answers to common questions, or get in touch about a specific address in Chelsea.
Local information from City of Chelsea — utilities department, municipal electric, water and sewer service · City of Chelsea — reporting outages and water main breaks · City of Chelsea — grease reduction program and household guidance. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Radon in Washtenaw County
Zone 1 is the highest of the three EPA categories — the predicted average indoor level across the county is above the 4 pCi/L action level. What a zone cannot tell you is anything about one house: 38% of tests actually run in Washtenaw County still came back at or above the EPA’s 4 pCi/L action level. A zone is an average taken across a whole county, and no house is 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 · Washtenaw 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 Chelsea 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
Mr. Cahoon was very thorough inspecting the home I am interested in purchasing. He explained everything clearly as he went along. Went above and beyond crawling into the very small crawl space! Thank you!
Amy CaragayYpsilanti, MII 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, MIWhat happens
Questions
The City does. Chelsea offers electric, water and sewer service to residents and businesses, publishes its own electric rate schedules annually, and files its own plans with the state public service commission. Natural gas comes from DTE, and phone and cable from private providers.
The City offices during business hours, with a status line for known outages, and the Chelsea Police Department after hours — the same number covers both electric outages and water main breaks. Gas leaks go to DTE. The City’s electric department also publishes an outage tip sheet.
On roughly a third of Chelsea houses, the original wiring dates from before 1940. Almost all have had a service upgrade since, but upgrades vary from a genuine rewire to a new panel with original distribution behind it. We inspect and report on the service entrance, the panel, grounding and bonding where accessible, and the accessible branch circuit wiring.
It stops. On a prewar house with a below-grade basement that is worth planning for rather than discovering, which is why battery and water-powered backup pumps exist. We report the sump arrangement as we find it, including whether a backup is fitted and where the discharge goes.
Because fats, oils and grease have shown up in its collection pipes and at its wastewater plant, hampering treatment and reducing the capacity of the sewer lines. Its guidance is to wipe pans, fryers and drip trays with paper towels that go out with the solid waste before anything is washed.
Yours first. The lateral from the building to the main belongs to the property owner, and grease congeals in a cold buried pipe well before it reaches the City’s system. On a line laid before 1940, under mature street trees, roots and grease compound each other — roots find a joint, grease catches on the roots.
No. Code enforcement here is provided by the police department and runs on complaints and an online reporting form. An absence of history means nobody complained about the property, not that anybody examined it. That is exactly the gap a full inspection fills.
On a prewar house, very much so. The lateral belongs to the owner, may have been in the ground ninety years, and has both mature street trees and decades of household grease working against it. A camera inspection documents roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages where they exist, and is added to the same visit.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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From the blog
October 22, 2017
December 21, 2017
Your local Chelsea home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
