Dundee, Michigan
Looking for a Dundee home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Dundee, 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 Dundee 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 Dundee and across Monroe 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 Dundee 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 reportDundee housing stock
Dundee has roughly 2,717 housing units and about 53% 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 2000s — 870 homes, around 32% of the town. It is also less detached-house territory than most of the area at 53%, so condominiums, duplexes and small multi-family buildings are a bigger share of what we inspect here — and those bring their own questions about what is yours to maintain and what belongs to the association.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $231,100. There are around 315 manufactured and mobile homes in Dundee. Those are a different inspection — the questions are about the frame, the anchoring and the skirting rather than a basement.
None of this is a prediction about a particular house. It is where a Dundee 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 Dundee was built
72% of homes here run on utility gas.
Local knowledge
Dundee has the newest housing stock of any community we cover, and it also has one of the oldest cores. Of roughly 2,717 units, 1,388 — 51% — were built since 2000, while 364 predate 1940.
Between those two groups there is very nearly nothing. The entire 1960s accounts for 23 units in this village, and the 1950s for 99. In practical terms, Dundee is a prewar village that added almost no housing for half a century and then grew very quickly in the last twenty-five years.
That produces two completely different inspections, and it also produces a common mistake. A house built in 2004 gets described as new, and buyers sometimes skip or shorten the inspection on that basis. Twenty years is exactly when the first round of things starts to go: the original roof, the first furnace and water heater, the seals and the exterior finishes, and whatever was done quickly during a busy building period.
The Village runs its own building department and issues every kind of permit itself — building, electrical, mechanical, plumbing, sign, zoning and site plan — so unlike many communities the whole history of a property should sit in one file.
And there is one detail in the permit process worth knowing before you buy: the Village holds a bond that is refunded only after the final inspection has been approved.
Before you buy
Permits
The Village sets out its permit process in five steps: the application packet goes in, the building inspector reviews the plans, the permit is issued if nothing is wrong, rough inspections are requested, and then final inspections. At that last stage the contractor may request a certificate of occupancy, and the bond is refunded once the final inspection has been approved.
That last clause is more useful to a buyer than it looks. Where a bond is held against a final inspection, an unfinished permit is not just a bureaucratic loose end — it is money the Village is still holding. That gives whoever pulled the permit a direct reason to close it out, and it makes an open permit on a property genuinely worth asking about.
On when a permit is needed, the Village is refreshingly blunt: more than likely, yes. Its stated test covers any project in which a building or structure is erected, altered, structurally repaired, moved or converted to a different use.
The building department also administers the zoning ordinance and the blight codes and handles appeals to the zoning board, and it registers contractors as well as issuing permits. For anyone researching a property, that concentration is an advantage: one request should produce the roof, the addition, the deck, the furnace, the service upgrade and the re-pipe together rather than sending you to a county or a state database for half of them.
The Village publishes the code editions it works from as well, which more municipalities should. A buyer’s inspection is not a code inspection and we do not issue citations — we report the condition and apparent function of what is there, and say plainly where work looks as though it happened outside the normal process.
Twenty-year-old houses
The single biggest block of housing in Dundee is the 870 units built in the 2000s, with another 483 from the 2010s behind them. Those are the houses buyers most often assume are fine, and they are the ones where an honest report earns its keep quietly rather than dramatically.
The roof comes first. An asphalt covering from 2004 is at or past the age where the manufacturer’s expectation runs out, and on a house that has never been re-roofed that is a real number to have before you agree a price rather than after.
Mechanical equipment follows. Furnaces, water heaters and air conditioning from the original build are now being replaced, and the quality of replacement work varies enormously — venting that has not kept pace with a newer appliance is one of the more common findings on housing of exactly this age.
Then the envelope: window seals, caulking, flashing details, deck ledger connections and fasteners, and exterior finishes at the stage where deferred maintenance starts to show. And grading, which on a house built on filled and graded ground has had twenty years to settle — usually toward the building rather than away from it.
Build quality is the last piece and the hardest to generalize about. A period of rapid building is a period of busy trades, and the difference between two houses on the same street from the same year can be considerable. That is not a criticism of anyone; it is why the inspection is done house by house rather than by reputation.
The village core
The 364 units predating 1940 sit at the other end of the range, and the questions change completely.
On a house of that age the inspection is largely an exercise in reading accumulated alteration. Electrical extended in stages by different hands, with mixed generations of wiring meeting in the same box. Plumbing renewed in part rather than in whole, leaving material transitions worth examining. Insulation and ventilation retrofitted into a building designed without either. Heating added, replaced, and sometimes vented into a chimney never intended for it. Roofs on their fourth or fifth covering.
And a foundation and basement that have had eighty-five years or more of freeze, thaw and water to contend with. Staining, efflorescence, previous patching, replaced flooring and how the space is used all tell part of the story, and we describe what the building actually shows rather than predicting what a particular spring will do.
With about 47% of the village’s housing something other than a detached house, attached and multi-unit property comes up too. On a condominium the association documents decide where your responsibility ends, 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.
Radon testing and mold inspection and testing can be added to either kind of visit.
Utilities and winter
The Village explains its sewer rate structure in unusually direct terms. It replaced a flat charge with a readiness to serve amount based on meter size, on the reasoning that meter size reflects a customer’s potential contribution to the sewer system.
That is worth knowing when you are working out the carrying cost of a property, because it means part of the sewer bill is fixed by the hardware at the house rather than by how much anyone uses. A larger meter costs more every month whether or not the taps are running.
The other local rule to have read in advance is about snow. When a snow emergency is declared, parking is prohibited on all public streets so crews can plow and salt, and the Village asks residents to move vehicles off the street in advance when more than two inches is forecast. Vehicles left on the street get ticketed.
On a property with limited off-street parking that is a real consideration, and it is the sort of thing worth noticing on a walkthrough: how many cars the drive actually holds, and whether the drive drains toward the street or toward the garage.
We report the drainage as we find it — the fall of the ground around the building, where the downspouts and any sump discharge appear to go, and what the foundation and basement show about water that has been there before.
The buried line
The drain line from the building to the main belongs to the owner at either end of Dundee’s age range, and no visual inspection reaches inside it.
On a house from the 2000s the risks are early-life ones: settlement after backfill, damage during construction or landscaping, and poorly bedded pipe that has developed a belly. Those do not announce themselves for a decade or two and then show up as a drain that runs slow for no obvious reason — which, on a twenty-year-old house, is roughly now.
On one of the 364 prewar houses the familiar issues apply instead: roots, cracks and displaced joints under a lot that has had ninety years to mature. We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what Dundee laterals are generally made of.
A sewer camera inspection records what is actually inside the line either way, and 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 Dundee.
Local information from Village of Dundee — Building Department and the permits it issues · Village of Dundee — frequently asked questions on permits, sewer rates and snow emergencies · Village of Dundee — building code information. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Radon in Monroe County
Zone 2 is the middle EPA category — the predicted average indoor level across the county sits between 2 and 4 pCi/L.
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 · Monroe County radon and inspection coverage
Zone from the EPA Map of Radon Zones.
Why choose us
Five reasons people here pick us as their Dundee 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
Mitch was great and thorough the our inspection. He provided explanations and suggestions throughout the service. Highly recommend!
Jaynie GMonroe, 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
Probably. The Village’s own answer begins “more than likely, yes”, and its stated test covers any project in which a building or structure is erected, altered, structurally repaired, moved or converted to a different use.
The Village holds a bond that is refunded only after the final inspection has been approved. For a buyer that is a useful signal: an open permit means money still sitting with the Village, and whoever pulled it has a direct financial reason to close it out. It is worth asking whether the permits on a property were finalled.
All of them — building, electrical, mechanical, plumbing, sign, zoning, zoning compliance, site plan review and temporary structures, plus contractor registrations. That means one records request at the Village should produce a property’s full history rather than sending you to a county or state database.
Yes, and this is exactly the age where one pays for itself. The original roof is at or past its expected life, the first furnace and water heater are being replaced, window seals and exterior finishes are showing wear, and grading has settled. Build quality also varies across a rapid building period, which is why an inspection is done house by house.
Sharply split. About 1,388 of roughly 2,717 units were built since 2000, while 364 predate 1940 — and almost nothing sits in between, with just 23 units recorded from the whole of the 1960s. In practice you are usually looking at either a recent house or a village house of ninety years or more.
The Village replaced a flat charge with a readiness to serve amount set by meter size, on the basis that meter size reflects a customer’s potential contribution to the sewer system. Part of the bill is therefore fixed by the hardware at the house rather than by usage.
Parking is prohibited on all public streets so crews can plow and salt, and vehicles left on the street are ticketed. The Village asks residents to move vehicles off the street in advance when more than two inches of snow is forecast, which is worth bearing in mind on a property with limited off-street parking.
Often yes. On a lateral laid in the 2000s the risks are early-life ones — settlement after backfill, construction or landscaping damage, poorly bedded pipe that has developed a belly — and they typically surface fifteen or twenty years later as a drain running slow for no obvious reason. A camera inspection documents the actual condition 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
April 5, 2024
Your local Dundee home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
