Corunna, Michigan
Looking for a Corunna home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Corunna, 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 Corunna 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 Corunna and across Shiawassee 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 Corunna 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 reportCorunna housing stock
Corunna has roughly 1,490 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 1970s: 292 homes, about 20% of everything standing today.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $140,000. Only 55% of occupied homes are owner-occupied, so a good share of what we inspect here is bought as a rental or sold with tenants in place — which changes what access on the day looks like.
None of this says anything about the specific house you are buying. It is the shortlist a Corunna 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 Corunna was built
83% of homes here run on utility gas, and 5 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 42 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Corunna answers, in its own ordinance and in plain words, the question we raise on almost every property we inspect — and it answers it more bluntly than most buyers expect.
The City’s building sewer ordinance states that the building sewer, including the portion in the public right-of-way, shall be maintained, repaired and replaced as required by the owner at no cost to the City.
Read that again, because the important words are in the middle. Not just the part on your land. The part under the street too. If the pipe running from your house to the public sewer fails anywhere along its length, including beneath the road, it is your pipe and your bill.
That is not unusual as a legal position — it is the position in most places, whether or not it is written down. What is unusual is a city stating it this clearly, and it raises the value of knowing the condition of that line before you buy rather than after.
The same ordinance also requires that the building sewer be reasonably gas tight and water tight to prevent groundwater and surface water getting in, and gives the City power to require testing on any building sewer before service is approved.
The housing is mostly mid-century: 821 of the roughly 1,490 units were built between 1950 and 1979, and only 78 have been added since 2000. About 36% of units are attached or multi-unit rather than detached.
Before you buy
The building sewer
Corunna’s building sewer ordinance is worth reading if you are buying here, because it is unusually specific about a part of a property almost nobody thinks about.
On watertightness, it requires that the building sanitary sewer and its connection to the public sewer be reasonably gas tight and water tight, to prevent infiltration or inflow of surface water or groundwater and to prevent sewage escaping. It empowers the City to set testing standards and to require infiltration and exfiltration tests on any building sewer before approving service.
That matters because infiltration is the quiet failure mode. A cracked or displaced joint does not necessarily block anything — it lets groundwater in, which loads the public system and, on the way, tells you the pipe has lost integrity.
On separation, the ordinance requires a separate and independent building sewer for every building, with a narrow exception where one building stands behind another on an interior lot. Where that shared arrangement exists, the City is explicit that it assumes no responsibility or obligation for drainage resulting from it. If you are buying a property with a rear building, that is worth establishing.
On demolition, any building sewer connection must be abandoned and plugged before a building is demolished, and an abandoned sewer may only be reused for a new building if the City examines and tests it and finds it meets all requirements. On a lot where something was previously cleared, that is a fair question to ask.
And on grade, the ordinance says the building sewer should be brought in below the basement floor wherever possible — and that where a building drain sits too low for gravity flow, the sewage must be lifted by approved means. In practical terms that means a pump, and a pump is a mechanical thing that fails.
What we do about it
On any property, the sewer lateral is invisible, not covered by a standard home inspection, and generally unknown to the seller. In Corunna it is also, by ordinance, entirely yours — all the way to the main, under the road included.
That combination makes a sewer camera inspection more obviously worth it here than almost anywhere. It records what is actually inside: roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages where they exist, and a clear run where they do not.
On a 1950s or 1960s house — and more than half this city is that age — the pipe has been in the ground sixty or seventy years, under streets whose trees have had exactly that long to mature. We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what Corunna laterals are generally made of, and a guess in a report is worse than no statement at all.
What we can tell you is what the camera sees, and on a pipe you are about to own outright that is the difference between a known quantity and an open liability. It is added to the same appointment rather than booked separately.
Where a property has a pump lifting sewage to the building sewer — which the ordinance contemplates for basements below the sewer line — we report the visible equipment, where it discharges, and whether there is any backup arrangement. We do not dismantle or load-test pumps, but their presence and condition belong in the report.
Inside the building we also look for what a failing drain leaves behind: staining and evidence of past backup around floor drains, corrosion at the base of equipment, replaced lower wall finishes, and how fixtures behave when the system is loaded.
The housing
Corunna’s housing concentrates in three decades: 253 units from the 1950s, 276 from the 1960s and 292 from the 1970s, together 821 of roughly 1,490. There are 238 from the 1990s, 134 predating 1940, and only 78 built since 2000.
On mid-century stock, the useful question is never whether a system has been updated but how, when and by whom. Electrical comes first: a house from the 1950s or 1960s was wired for a fraction of today’s demand, and almost all have been upgraded — but a genuine rewire and a newer panel fitted in front of original distribution look similar from the outside and are very different to live with.
Plumbing follows the same pattern: renewed in part rather than in whole, leaving transitions between materials at the joins, which is where problems concentrate. Given how clearly the City assigns responsibility for the drain leaving the building, the condition of the plumbing inside it is worth knowing properly.
Roofs on this stock are on a second or third covering. Heating equipment is two or three generations from the original, and a newer high-efficiency appliance fitted into an older chimney or vent arrangement is a common and specific thing we check. Insulation and ventilation reflect the standards of the day, which usually leaves a real improvement available in the attic.
With about 36% of units attached or multi-unit, a fair number of purchases here involve shared structure. On those, establish where the boundary falls between your responsibility and a shared one — and in particular who owns the drain run, which may well be shared.
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.
City services
Corunna handles zoning, building, electrical, mechanical and plumbing itself rather than contracting any of it out or devolving it to the county. So a single records request to the City should cover the whole permit history of a property, which is simpler than many places we cover.
The public works department is responsible for planning, construction, reconstruction and maintenance of the City’s infrastructure, including water mains, sewer lines and storm drains.
On the billing side, the City’s code provides that owners connected to the water mains pay a readiness-to-serve charge, with rates prescribed annually by council resolution. We have not read the rate schedule and will not quote figures, but the mechanism is worth knowing: part of what you pay is fixed and set each year, independent of what you use.
One practical note from the ordinance for anyone planning work: connections to and abandonments from the public sewer are made under the City’s supervision, and the applicant must notify the City when the work is ready for inspection. Excavations must be guarded and lit, and any street, sidewalk or parkway disturbed has to be restored to the City’s satisfaction.
A buyer’s inspection is not a permit search and does not assess ordinance compliance. What it does is tell you what is actually there and what condition it is in, so the questions you take to the City are specific ones. We deliver a full written report with photographs, generally the same day.
Drainage
Because the ordinance is concerned with surface water and groundwater getting into the sewer, it is worth saying what a homeowner can actually do about water around a building.
We record where the downspouts terminate and whether they carry water clear of the walls or drop it at the foundation, where any sump pump discharges and whether there is a backup arrangement, and how the ground falls away from the building.
On a house that has stood since the 1950s or 1960s, that fall is rarely what the builder intended. Sixty or seventy years of added paths, raised beds, new drives, landscaping and settled ground change how water moves around a foundation, and the evidence turns up in the basement rather than the garden.
Inside, we look for staining and tide lines on foundation walls, efflorescence and mineral deposits, replaced lower wall finishes, and corrosion at the base of mechanical equipment. Equipment raised up on blocks is usually a story about something that happened once.
Most of what we find on the drainage side is straightforward to correct and cheap relative to what it prevents — and on a property where the drain leaving the building is entirely your responsibility, reducing what you send into it is a sensible thing to get right early.
Local information from City of Corunna — building sewer ordinance, Chapter 78 Division 3 · City of Corunna — water and sewer charges · City of Corunna — public works department · City of Corunna — city home page and departments. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Why choose us
Five reasons people here pick us as their Corunna 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
You do. The City’s ordinance states that the building sewer, including the portion in the public right-of-way, shall be maintained, repaired and replaced as required by the owner at no cost to the City. That includes the part under the street.
Because the lateral is invisible, not covered by a standard home inspection, generally unknown to the seller — and here, by ordinance, entirely yours. A camera records roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies and blockages where they exist, and a clear run where they do not.
That it be reasonably gas tight and water tight, to prevent infiltration or inflow of surface water and groundwater and to prevent sewage escaping. The City may set testing standards and require infiltration and exfiltration tests before approving service.
The ordinance requires a separate and independent building sewer for every building, with a narrow exception for a rear building on an interior lot. Where that shared arrangement exists, the City states it assumes no responsibility for drainage resulting from it — so establish the position before you buy.
It can. Any building sewer connection must be abandoned and plugged before demolition, and an abandoned sewer may only be reused for a new building if the City examines and tests it and finds it meets all requirements. Worth asking about.
The ordinance contemplates exactly that: where a building drain is too low for gravity flow, the sewage must be lifted by approved means. In practice that means a pump, and a pump is a mechanical thing that fails. We report the visible equipment, where it discharges and whether there is a backup.
One place. Corunna handles zoning, building, electrical, mechanical and plumbing itself, so a single records request to the City should cover the whole picture.
The electrical, and what "upgraded" actually means — a genuine rewire is very different from a newer panel with original distribution behind it. Then partial plumbing renewals and their material transitions, second or third roof coverings, and heating equipment fitted into older venting.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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