Clay Township, Michigan
Looking for a Clay Township home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Clay Township, 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 Clay Township 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 Clay Township and across St Clair 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 Clay Township 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 reportClay Township housing stock
Clay Township has roughly 5,472 housing units and about 91% 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.
At 91% 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 $286,200. 92% are owner-occupied, which is high even for this area. There are around 329 manufactured and mobile homes in Clay Township. Those are a different inspection — the questions are about the frame, the anchoring and the skirting rather than a basement.
None of this says anything about the specific house you are buying. It is the shortlist a Clay Township 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 Clay Township was built
90% of homes here run on utility gas, and 7 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 111 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
The Township describes itself as bounded on three sides by water, and divided into several islands by the channels of the St. Clair River — Harsens, Dickinson and Russell among them. It sits at the southern point of St. Clair County, with the river to the east and south and Lake St. Clair to the west.
That geography shapes every practical question about a building here, and the Township has an unusual amount of local law about water. Its published documents include an emergency flood control ordinance, a separate flood damage prevention ordinance, and a surface water drainage ordinance.
It also publishes something few communities need to: a set of frequently asked questions about septic systems and flooding events, alongside general septic maintenance guidance. A township that has to write that document is telling you plainly that septic systems here sit in ground which can take on water.
And the high water of 2020 has left physical traces. Shoreline owners placed sandbags then, and the Township has since carried a notice that state officials want them removed now that levels have fallen back.
None of this makes Clay Township a difficult place to buy. It makes it a place where the water-related questions need asking first, rather than last.
Before you buy
Water and the buildings
The Township’s document library lists an emergency flood control ordinance, a flood damage prevention ordinance and a surface water drainage ordinance as separate items. It also publishes a stormwater management plan and takes part in a Lake St. Clair watershed priorities plan.
We are naming those documents rather than summarizing them, deliberately. We were not able to read their text, and describing what a flood ordinance probably requires would be a guess dressed up as local knowledge. Ask the Township directly what applies to the parcel you are buying — and ask before you are under contract, because the answer can affect what you are permitted to build, rebuild or extend.
What a home inspection contributes is the physical evidence. On a property here we pay particular attention to the things water leaves behind: staining and tide lines on foundation walls, efflorescence and mineral deposits, rust at the base of appliances and mechanical equipment, replaced lower wall finishes, and mechanical equipment that has been raised off the floor. Equipment sitting on blocks is usually a story about something that happened once.
We report where downspouts terminate, where any sump pump discharges, whether there is a backup arrangement for the sump, and how the ground falls around the building. On the shoreline properties we also record the visible condition of what is there at the water edge, and whether sandbags remain in place from the high water.
We do not determine flood zones, we do not advise on insurance, and we do not assess ordinance compliance. Those are separate questions with separate professionals, and this is a place to ask them properly.
Septic
Among the material the Township makes available are frequently asked questions about septic systems and flooding events, guidance on protecting a septic system, homeowner maintenance guidance and the state’s septic education material.
That combination is the clearest signal on the whole site. A septic system depends on unsaturated ground beneath the drainfield to do its work. When the water table rises, that ground stops being available, and the system stops behaving as designed — regardless of how sound the tank itself is.
So on a septic property here, a septic evaluation is not a box-ticking exercise. It is specialist work carried out by or through the county health department, it answers questions no visual inspection can, and it matters more in this township than in most places we work. Arrange it as a separate appointment, and arrange it early.
We inspect the building and the plumbing from the house side inward: the accessible supply and drain lines, the vent arrangements we can see, how fixtures behave when the system is loaded, and the visible condition of any pump equipment. We report what we observe about drainage performance during the visit.
Surface water is the part an owner can most easily influence. A drainfield working in ground that is also receiving every downspout and a sump discharge is a drainfield being asked to do two jobs, and in a township where the water table is already the governing constraint that is worth correcting. We report the grading and the discharge points so you know what you are dealing with.
Some properties here are served by public water instead, and the Township publishes annual water quality reports. Whether a particular address is on a well, on a Township main, on septic or on sewer is a parcel-by-parcel question, and one worth settling in writing rather than assuming.
The 2020 high water
The Township’s code compliance page carries a notice addressed to shoreline property owners. State environmental officials published a public notice saying that owners along the Great Lakes and Lake St. Clair should remove sandbags placed along the shoreline in 2020, once water levels fell back below the ordinary high-water level, because deteriorating bags leave plastic pollution in the water and along the shore.
The Township also makes available high water and flood resources — guidance on using sandbags to protect a home or business, how to build a sandbag wall, an erosion fact sheet, material on the standard flood insurance policy, and a record of Lake St. Clair water levels from February 2020.
For a buyer, that history is useful in two ways. It tells you the high water of 2020 was serious enough here to warrant emergency measures. And it means a shoreline property may come with sandbags still in place that the current owner was expected to remove — a small obligation, but one that transfers with the property along with any deterioration that has happened since.
This is not new ground for the township. Its own published history records that in 1827 the waters of the lake rose so high that an early settler’s farm on the Lake St. Clair shore was completely submerged. High water here is not a modern development; it is a recurring feature of the place, and the buildings that have done well are the ones built and maintained with that in mind.
On an inspection we note what is visible at the shoreline and around the building — remaining sandbags, the condition of any seawall or revetment we can see from accessible ground, erosion at the bank, and how the ground falls toward or away from the structure. We do not assess the structural adequacy of shoreline protection works or dive to inspect anything below the water line. Both are specialist disciplines.
The housing
Clay Township has an unusually even housing profile. About 840 units predate 1940, then 371 in the 1940s, 588 in the 1950s, 631 in the 1960s, 913 in the 1970s, 698 in the 1980s and 815 in the 1990s. No single decade dominates, and two neighboring houses can easily be sixty years apart.
That matters because there is no useful generalization about a Clay Township house. On the older stock — and 840 pre-1940 units is a substantial old core — expect electrical systems rebuilt in stages by different hands, plumbing renewed in part rather than in whole with material transitions worth examining, several generations of roof covering, and heating equipment two or three replacements removed from the original with venting that does not always keep pace.
On the 1970s and 1980s stock, the largest single group at over 1,600 units, the pattern is different: original windows reaching the end of their service life, second-round roof coverings, aging service panels, and insulation levels that reflect the standards of the day rather than current practice.
A great deal of the housing here is waterfront or near-water, and that changes the exterior inspection. Wind exposure, moisture load and freeze-thaw all work harder on a building near open water. Cladding, trim, fasteners, decks and dock-side structures weather faster, and crawl spaces need particular attention for ventilation and moisture.
Nine in ten housing units here are single-family detached, so this is overwhelmingly a township of individual houses on individual lots.
Radon testing and mold inspection and testing can be added to any visit, and commercial building inspections to the CCPIA standard are available for commercial property.
The buried line
On any property here that connects to a public sewer, the line from the building out to the main belongs to the owner, and no visual inspection reaches inside it.
On one of the 840 houses predating 1940 that pipe may have been in the ground the better part of a century. We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what Clay Township laterals are generally made of, and a guess in a report is worse than no statement at all.
A sewer camera inspection records what is actually inside: roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages where they exist, and a clear run where they do not. In a township with a high water table, a belly or a cracked joint matters more than it would elsewhere, because groundwater finds its way into a compromised pipe and the problem announces itself at the worst possible time of year.
On a septic property the same camera documents the building drain out to the tank. That is the owner’s pipe, and it is not covered by a septic evaluation, which looks at the tank and the field rather than the run between them and the house.
A camera inspection is added to the same appointment rather than booked separately. You can read what our clients say, look through answers to common questions, or get in touch about a specific address in Clay Township.
Permits and enforcement
The Township publishes building, plumbing, mechanical and electrical permit applications, a zoning permit application for fences and small sheds, sign and rezoning applications, and monthly building and zoning activity reports going back several years. Its zoning ordinance and master plan are both published and both were updated in 2026.
That monthly reporting is genuinely useful for a buyer. It means permit activity in the township is a matter of public record in an accessible form, and a records request about a specific property has somewhere to start.
Code compliance here is handled through a written complaint process. The Township is explicit that complaints must be submitted in writing on its own anti-blight and zoning form, by email, in person or through the drop box, and that phone complaints will not be accepted. It also publishes a dangerous buildings ordinance.
Property maintenance obligations get published each season. The Township issues a notice of obligation to cut weeds, and specifically names phragmites and the spread of vines — phragmites being the tall invasive reed that colonizes the delta marshes here. The notice states that a resident who receives a letter will get only one for the season, and that the Township may schedule cuts if violations remain.
A buyer’s inspection is not a permit search and does not assess ordinance compliance. What it does is tell you which parts of a property to ask about, so the questions you put to the Township are the right ones. A buyer’s inspection gives you a full written report with photographs, generally the same day, while you still have room to act on what it says.
Local information from Clay Township — Township facts, geography and history · Clay Township — code compliance, the EGLE sandbag notice and the weed-cutting obligation · Clay Township — high water and flood resources · Clay Township — published documents, ordinances and permit applications. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Why choose us
Five reasons people here pick us as their Clay Township 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, MIThis is one of the finest companies I have come across - that means serious customer service and professionalism. Justin was the inspector and he was very thorough yet very kind to answers all the questions that came in my mind during inspection. He took enough time, no rush, and a very detailed inspection was conducted. Extremely competitive pricing and timing from the company. 100% recommend to anyone looking for any kind of property inspection!!
Chirag R MiyaniMichiganWhat happens
Questions
The Township publishes an emergency flood control ordinance, a separate flood damage prevention ordinance and a surface water drainage ordinance, and it describes itself as bounded on three sides by water and divided into islands. We do not determine flood zones for any address — ask the Township and your insurer directly, and do it early.
No. A septic evaluation is specialist work carried out by or through the county health department. It matters more here than in most places: the Township publishes FAQs specifically about septic systems and flooding events, because a rising water table stops a drainfield working regardless of the tank condition.
Staining and tide lines on foundation walls, efflorescence and mineral deposits, rust at the base of mechanical equipment and appliances, replaced lower wall finishes, and equipment raised off the floor. Mechanical equipment sitting up on blocks is usually a story about something that happened once.
Shoreline owners placed them during the 2020 high water. State officials have since said they should be removed now that levels have fallen back, because deteriorating bags leave plastic pollution along the shore. A property may come with bags the seller was expected to remove.
We note the visible condition of what can be seen from accessible ground, along with erosion at the bank and how the ground falls toward the building. We do not assess the structural adequacy of shoreline protection works and we do not inspect anything below the water line. Both are separate specialist disciplines.
No, and that is worth knowing. About 840 units predate 1940 and every decade since is well represented, with the 1970s the single largest group. Two houses on the same road can be sixty years apart, so the inspection findings differ far more than in a township built out in one push.
It varies by parcel. The Township publishes annual water quality reports, so public water serves part of the township, and there is a historic waterline special assessment on record. Get the answer in writing for the specific address rather than assuming from the neighbors.
Yes, and the high water table is why. A belly or a cracked joint that would be a slow nuisance elsewhere becomes a groundwater entry point here. A camera inspection records what is actually inside the pipe, and on a septic property it covers the run between the house and the tank that a septic evaluation does not.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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From the blog
October 22, 2017
February 24, 2026
Your local Clay Township home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
