Durand, Michigan
Looking for a Durand home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Durand, 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 Durand 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 Durand 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 Durand 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 reportDurand housing stock
Durand has roughly 1,657 housing units and about 73% 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 years before 1940 — 748 homes, around 45% of the town.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $114,800.
None of this is a prediction about a particular house. It is where a Durand 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 Durand was built
76% of homes here run on utility gas. Another 14 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Durand is one of the oldest housing stocks we work with. About 748 of its roughly 1,657 units — 45% — were built before 1940, and nothing at all has been added since 2009. Every purchase here is a purchase of an older building.
The City also operates a rental registration and inspection program, established by ordinance in 2015, and it publishes the paperwork in full: the ordinance itself, the administrative policies, registration forms for single and multiple units, and — most usefully — the rental inspection report form.
That last document is worth downloading whether you are buying an investment property or not. A published inspection report form tells you exactly what the City looks at when it inspects a rental, which is as close as you will get to a written statement of what the City considers acceptable condition.
On a city where 27% of units are attached or multi-unit and nearly half the stock is pre-war, that is genuinely useful context for any buyer, landlord or not.
One further thing works in your favor here. Durand handles zoning, building, electrical, mechanical and plumbing entirely in-house rather than contracting any of it out or devolving it to the county. So a single records request to the City covers the whole permit history of a property, which is simpler than most places we cover.
City offices run Monday to Thursday and close Friday through Sunday, so plan records questions around a four-day week.
Before you buy
Rental housing
The City’s rental policies page carries the whole set: a rental registration ordinance and administrative policies dating from 2015, registration forms for single and multiple units, and a rental inspection report form.
We have not opened those documents and we are not going to state any inspection interval, fee or checklist item. But the shape of the program is clear from the documents themselves: rentals here are registered, and they are inspected against a standard form.
If you are buying an investment property, read the ordinance and the administrative policies before you commit, and register properly once you own it. If you are buying a home, the inspection report form is still worth a look, because it is effectively the City telling you what it considers important about a dwelling’s condition.
What our own inspection contributes is the condition picture against which any of that matters. On a property here we report the things that typically feature in a housing context: smoke and carbon monoxide alarm presence and placement, means of escape from sleeping rooms and basements, handrails and guards at stairs and landings, the electrical panel and accessible wiring, heating equipment condition and venting, plumbing function and evidence of leaks, and the condition of the building envelope.
Finding those before you own the building turns them into a negotiating position. Finding them afterwards turns them into a repair list with somebody else’s deadline on it.
The housing
A city that is 45% pre-1940 and has added no housing since 2009 presents a particular kind of inspection. Nothing here is new, everything has been worked on, and the useful question is never whether a system has been updated but how, when and by whom.
Electrical comes first and matters most. A house from this era was wired for a fraction of today’s demand, and every one has had attention since — but there is a wide gulf between a genuine rewire and a newer panel fitted in front of original distribution, and eighty-five years of circuits added in stages by different hands is the norm rather than the exception. We report what the panel actually contains, how the accessible wiring is arranged, and where work appears to have been added piecemeal.
Plumbing follows the same pattern: renewed in part rather than in whole, leaving transitions between materials at the joins, and those transitions are where problems concentrate. A house described as having had the plumbing done usually means part of it.
Roofs on this stock are on a fourth or fifth covering. Heating equipment is several 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 a very different era, which usually means a real and worthwhile improvement is still available in the attic.
Foundations of this period are typically stone or early block. Their condition depends far more on how water has been managed around the building across eighty-five years than on how they were originally built, and on a town lot with limited space between buildings that water management is usually the whole story.
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.
Permits
Durand keeps zoning, building, electrical, mechanical and plumbing all in-house. That is less common than it sounds — plenty of communities this size contract the trades out or hand them to the county — and it makes a buyer’s job simpler.
One request to the building and zoning department should cover the full permit history of a property: what was built, when the electrical was upgraded, when the furnace was replaced, whether an addition was permitted. There is no second office to chase and nothing to fall between two authorities.
The City also publishes construction detail forms alongside its permit forms, and maintains a code of ordinances and a 2020 master plan.
On a city where nearly half the housing predates 1940, that record is worth requesting. Buildings of that age have been altered many times, and the question is rarely whether work was done but whether it was done properly and recorded.
A buyer’s inspection is not a permit search and cannot tell you whether a permit was pulled. What it does is tell you what was actually done and how well, which is what makes the records request worth making. We deliver a full written report with photographs, generally the same day, while you still have room to act on what it says.
The neighborhoods
The City runs a neighborhood blight elimination program alongside its rental registration. We have not read its terms and we are not going to characterize it beyond saying it exists.
What it tells a buyer is that the City is actively working on the condition of its housing, which on a stock this old is a sensible thing for a city to be doing and generally good news for a property owner. Ask the City how the program works if you are buying something that needs work — there may be assistance available, and there may equally be expectations.
On the physical side, most of what we report on the outside of an older Durand house comes down to water. 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 before 1940, that fall is almost never what the builder intended. Eighty-five years of added paths, raised beds, new drives, landscaping and settled ground change how water moves around a foundation, and the evidence of what that has caused turns up in the basement rather than in 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 an eighty-five-year-old building, keeping water away from the structure is the single most valuable maintenance there is.
The buried line
The line running from the building out to the sewer main belongs to the owner, and no visual inspection reaches inside it.
On one of the 748 houses here predating 1940 — and that is nearly half of them — that pipe may have been in the ground for the better part of a century, under a street whose trees have had exactly that long to mature. With nothing built in the city since 2009, there is effectively no new housing stock and therefore effectively no new laterals.
We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what Durand 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. On a city with housing this old and this little new stock, it is among the most useful things you can add, because the lateral is invisible, not covered by a standard inspection, and generally unknown to the seller.
On an attached or multi-unit property — and 27% of units here are — establish who owns the drain run before assuming anything.
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 Durand.
Local information from City of Durand — rental policies and forms, including the rental inspection report form · City of Durand — building and zoning department · City of Durand — neighborhood blight elimination program · City of Durand — code of ordinances. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Why choose us
Five reasons people here pick us as their Durand 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 City operates a rental registration program established by ordinance in 2015, and it publishes the ordinance, administrative policies, registration forms for single and multiple units, and a rental inspection report form. Download them before committing to an investment purchase.
Because it is effectively the City telling you what it considers important about a dwelling’s condition. On a city where nearly half the housing predates 1940, that is useful context for any buyer.
One place. Durand handles zoning, building, electrical, mechanical and plumbing all in-house, so a single records request to the building and zoning department should cover the whole picture. There is no second office to chase.
Very. About 748 of roughly 1,657 units — 45% — predate 1940, and nothing at all has been built since 2009. Every purchase here is a purchase of an older building.
The electrical, and what "upgraded" actually means — a genuine rewire is a very different proposition from a newer panel with eighty-five-year-old distribution behind it. Then partial plumbing renewals and their material transitions, four or five roof coverings, and heating equipment fitted into older venting.
A City program running alongside rental registration. We have not read its terms and will not characterize it, but if you are buying something that needs work it is worth asking the City how it operates — there may be assistance available, and there may equally be expectations.
Monday to Thursday, closing Friday through Sunday. Raise records and permit questions early in a contingency period rather than late.
Yes, more than in most places. With nothing built since 2009 there are effectively no new laterals, and on a pre-1940 house the pipe may have been under a tree-lined street for close to a century. A camera inspection is added to the same visit.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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October 22, 2017
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Your local Durand home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
