Farmington, Michigan
Looking for a Farmington home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Farmington, 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 Farmington 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 Farmington and across Oakland 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 Farmington 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 reportFarmington housing stock
Farmington has roughly 5,484 housing units and about 57% 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 1950s: 1,468 homes, about 27% of everything standing today. It is also less detached-house territory than most of the area at 57%, 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 $262,400.
None of this says anything about the specific house you are buying. It is the shortlist a Farmington 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 Farmington was built
82% of homes here run on utility gas, and 21 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 82 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Farmington states the ownership of a sewer lateral more plainly than anywhere else we work, and what it says will surprise most homeowners.
The City owns the sanitary and storm sewers within the public rights-of-way. The resident owns and is responsible for the sewer line from their property extending to — and including — the connection to the City main, even if that main is on the other side of the road. Maintenance and repairs on that section are the resident’s.
Read that carefully. Responsibility does not stop at the property line, and it does not stop at the curb. It runs all the way to the point where your pipe meets the City’s, which on some streets means a homeowner is responsible for a pipe running under the full width of a public road. The same page applies that to the storm lateral as well as the sanitary one.
And it is the one component no visual inspection reaches. On a housing stock where 1,468 of about 5,484 units were built in the 1950s and only 182 have gone up since 2000, that pipe is typically sixty or seventy years old, with street trees of the same vintage over it.
Before you buy
What the City cleans, and what it does not
The Department of Public Works cleans and maintains about fifty miles of sanitary sewer main, and gets through all of it on a five-year cycle. The water and sewer lines page describes the method: hydraulic jetting, a hose and nozzle fed in at one manhole and driven by high-pressure water to the next, 300 to 400 feet away, cleaning the pipe again as it is reeled back.
The City is careful to say what that does not cover: the residential connection. Preventative cleaning keeps the mains clear. Your lateral is not part of the program.
The genuinely useful part is what the City tells residents they may notice while crews are working nearby — loud noises and rumbling, a vacuum effect in plumbing fixtures that draws water levels down, bubbling or burping as gas is released, or sewer odor in the house. And its explanation: these can be mitigated by making sure the plumbing vent is properly installed and maintained.
That is a diagnosis most homeowners never get. A drainage system is vented so air can replace the water moving through it; that is what keeps the traps sealed and the sewer on the far side of them. When the street main is jetted, a house with inadequate or blocked venting reveals itself — gurgling fixtures, traps siphoning dry, odor arriving indoors. If you have ever noticed that in a house you are buying or own, it is worth raising.
Venting is part of what an inspection looks at: whether fixtures are vented, whether vents terminate where they should, and whether drains run and clear as they ought to when operated. A buyer’s inspection covers the roof, structure, foundation, drainage, electrical, heating and cooling, plumbing and the accessible interior, and reports what the building actually does when it is used.
On line insurance: the City notes that private vendors sell sewer line maintenance contracts, that it does not offer one and does not endorse any vendor. We take the same position — we sell no insurance and recommend no vendor. What we can do is tell you the condition of the pipe before you decide whether you need anything at all.
Protecting the drinking water
Farmington publishes the clearest homeowner explanation of cross connections we have come across, and usefully, every item on it is something an inspection can look at.
A cross connection is any actual or potential link between the drinking water supply and a source of contamination. The City describes the two ways water travels the wrong way. Backsiphonage happens when the municipal system loses pressure — during firefighting or a water main break — and the drop siphons water back out of a sink or a bucket into the supply. Backpressure happens when something in the building, a boiler for instance, produces higher pressure than the main and pushes water the other way. State plumbing code requires approved backflow prevention at every point of potable water connection and use.
The City’s list of places to prevent backflow in a house is bathtub and shower fixtures, toilet tanks, boilers, laundry tubs and other drain lines, and outside faucets and spigots. Its specific asks are a hose bibb vacuum breaker on every threaded faucet around the house, a proper air gap of at least an inch above any drain for water treatment devices such as a water softener, and backflow protection on lawn irrigation systems tested at appropriate intervals by a certified tester.
Its list of things not to do is just as practical: do not submerge hoses in buckets, pools, tubs, sinks or ponds; do not use spray attachments without backflow prevention; and do not connect the waste pipe from a softener or treatment system directly to the sewer or into a submerged drain — there must always be that inch of air gap.
Hose bibbs, laundry tubs, softener drains and boiler fill arrangements are all things we look at and report. Whether a given arrangement satisfies the City’s program is the City’s call rather than ours, but a softener draining straight into a standpipe with no air gap, or a threaded outdoor faucet with no vacuum breaker, is easy to see and easy to put right.
Permits and paperwork
The Planning and Building Department’s forms and permits page carries the usual building, electrical, mechanical, plumbing, fire alarm, fire suppression and sign applications, contractor registration, residential zoning permits and commercial zoning compliance, along with a published fee schedule.
Three other documents there are worth knowing about. There is a rental registration application. There is an abandoned property registration application — relevant if you are looking at something that has stood empty. And there is a property maintenance inspection application, which the City prices at $200 per unit and which asks for the proposed use and occupancy of the building and for tenant details.
We want to be careful here, because this is the kind of thing that gets mis-stated. Nothing the City publishes says that inspection is triggered by a sale, so we are not going to tell you Farmington requires an inspection before closing. If you are buying, renting out or changing the occupancy of a property here, ask the department directly which of these applies to you. The City also publishes a roofing inspection requirements document, worth picking up before any roof work.
One thing that genuinely does catch people: the City of Farmington and the City of Farmington Hills are two separate governments with their own ordinances, their own inspectors and their own permit records — and Farmington is the small one, surrounded by the larger. A Farmington postal address does not tell you which. Confirm the municipality before relying on anything you have read about either, including what we have written about Farmington Hills.
The housing is mostly mid-century: of about 5,484 units, 1,468 date from the 1950s, 1,180 from the 1970s and 937 from the 1960s, with 413 predating 1940 and just 182 built since 2000. Around 57% is single-family detached, leaving a substantial share in attached and multi-unit buildings.
The buried line
Everything on this page comes back to the same pipe. The City has put in writing that it is yours, all the way to the main, across the road if that is where the main runs.
On a 1950s house it has been in the ground seventy years; on a 1970s house, fifty. Either is long enough for roots to find a joint, for ground movement to displace a section, or for a repair to have been made that nobody now remembers. We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what Farmington laterals are generally made of.
What makes this different from most places is the length of the run. Where the main is on the far side of the street, the owner’s pipe crosses the road — more distance, more joints, and ground that has been loaded by traffic and opened up for utility work over the decades. It is the part of the system with the most that can go wrong and the least chance of anyone having looked.
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. It is added to the same visit rather than booked separately. Alongside it, commercial building inspections follow the CCPIA standard for offices, retail, multifamily and warehouse property, and radon testing or mold inspection and testing can be added to a residential or commercial visit. Get in touch to talk through a particular property.
Local information from City of Farmington — water and sewer lines, jurisdiction and main cleaning · City of Farmington — protecting your drinking water, cross connections and backflow · City of Farmington — forms and permits. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Radon in Oakland County
Zone 2 is the middle EPA category — the predicted average indoor level across the county sits between 2 and 4 pCi/L. What a zone cannot tell you is anything about one house: 29% of tests actually run in Oakland 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 · Oakland 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 Farmington 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, MIExcellent sums up the entire experience, from the initial call to set up the appointment with staff that was informative and helpful, up until the actual inspection that was very professional and thorough with any and all questions I had answered. I would highly recommend Trademark to anyone who needs inspection services. Thanks again Curt, my inspector, for an excellent job.
Johnny Thomas JrSouthfield, MIWhat happens
Questions
You do, and further than most people expect. The City owns the sanitary and storm sewers within the public rights-of-way, but states that the resident owns and is responsible for the line from their property extending to and including the connection to the City main — even if that main is on the other side of the road. The same applies to the storm lateral. Maintenance and repairs on that section are the owner’s.
It can be a useful warning. The City explains that during hydraulic jetting residents may notice rumbling, a vacuum effect that pulls water levels down in fixtures, bubbling or burping, or sewer odor — and that these can be mitigated by making sure the plumbing vent is properly installed and maintained. A house that siphons its traps dry when the main is jetted is telling you its venting is inadequate, which is worth having looked at.
No. The Department of Public Works cleans and maintains roughly fifty miles of municipal sanitary sewer main, working through all of it on a five-year cycle using hydraulic jetting between manholes. The City is explicit that this does not cover the residential connection. That pipe is yours.
That is your call, and we have no stake in it. The City notes that private vendors sell sewer line maintenance contracts, that it does not offer one, and that it does not endorse any vendor. We do not sell insurance and we recommend no vendor either. What we can do is tell you the condition of the pipe, which is a better basis for the decision than a build year.
The City’s own list is a good one: a hose bibb vacuum breaker on every threaded faucet around the house, an air gap of at least an inch above any drain for a water softener or other treatment device, and backflow protection on lawn irrigation tested at intervals by a certified tester. It also asks people not to submerge hoses in buckets, pools or tubs, and not to connect softener waste pipes directly to the sewer or into a submerged drain.
Nothing the City publishes says so, and we are not going to tell you otherwise. The City does publish a property maintenance inspection application at $200 per unit, alongside rental registration and abandoned property registration, but the application is framed around the use and occupancy of the building rather than a sale. If you are buying, letting or changing the occupancy of a property here, ask the Planning and Building Department which applies.
No. They are two separate cities with their own ordinances, inspectors and permit records, and Farmington is the smaller one, surrounded by Farmington Hills. A Farmington postal address does not tell you which municipality a property sits in, so confirm before relying on anything you have read about either.
Mostly mid-century, and very little is new. Of about 5,484 housing units, 1,468 date from the 1950s, 1,180 from the 1970s and 937 from the 1960s, with 413 predating 1940 and only 182 built since 2000. Around 57% is single-family detached, which leaves a large share in attached and multi-unit buildings — so establishing what an association covers and what you do is often the first question here.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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From the blog
October 22, 2017
Your local Farmington home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
