Fort Gratiot, Michigan
Looking for a Fort Gratiot home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Fort Gratiot, 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 Fort Gratiot 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 Fort Gratiot 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 Fort Gratiot 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 reportFort Gratiot housing stock
Fort Gratiot has roughly 5,012 housing units and about 76% 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.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $206,100. There are around 431 manufactured and mobile homes in Fort Gratiot. 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 Fort Gratiot 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 Fort Gratiot was built
80% of homes here run on utility gas, and 19 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 213 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Fort Gratiot Township runs an inspection we have not found anywhere else in this region, and it is the very first one on its list — before the footing, before the foundation, before anything is built at all. It is called a ground water investigation, and it happens at the time of excavation.
A township that looks at the groundwater before it looks at the footing is telling you what the ground is like here. On a Lake Huron shoreline township, that is exactly the right thing to check first, and it sets the tone for everything else on the permit checklist.
That checklist asks, where applicable, for an EGLE high risk erosion permit or a wetland assessment; for FEMA flood zone documentation — either a letter of map amendment or a professional elevation survey showing the construction sits above flood levels, or plans showing it will meet flood zone standards if it does not; for health department approval on well and septic; and for soil erosion and sedimentation control.
None of those appear on a permit checklist by accident. Together they describe a place where water — below the ground, at the shoreline, and coming down from the sky — is the first thing anyone building has to answer for. It should be the first thing a buyer asks about too.
The housing is spread unusually evenly across seven decades: of about 5,012 units, 883 date from the 1990s, 745 from the 2000s, 730 from the 1950s, 684 from the 1970s and 668 from the 1960s, with 406 predating 1940. Around 76% is single-family detached.
Before you buy
Groundwater
The point of a ground water investigation at excavation is to find out, before anyone commits concrete, how high the water sits and what the footing and foundation will have to be designed around. It is a sensible thing for a shoreline township to require.
For a buyer looking at a finished house, the implication runs the other way. If the Township thought it worth inspecting on the way in, the water table is a live consideration on the way out — which makes the below-grade part of a Fort Gratiot house the part worth looking at hardest.
On an inspection that means the basement or crawlspace gets close attention: the foundation walls and what they show, efflorescence and staining and how high it runs, any evidence of past water at the wall-floor joint, the condition of the floor slab, and whether there is a sump — and if so, what state the pit and pump are in, whether there is a backup arrangement, and where the discharge goes. Outside, we report accessible grading and which way the ground actually falls, gutters and downspouts and their discharge points, and any low ground against the building.
A dry basement on a dry day proves nothing on its own. What a report can do is set out the evidence — the staining, the equipment, the grading, the storage habits of whoever lived there, whether anything is kept off the floor on pallets — and let you weigh it. Ask the seller directly what the basement does in a wet spring, and ask the neighbors too.
A buyer’s inspection covers that alongside the roof, structure, foundation, drainage, electrical, heating and cooling, plumbing and the accessible interior.
The permit trail
The Township’s building department page ends with an offer worth taking up: inspection histories are computerized, and if you need to know when an inspection was performed, the information can be had with a quick phone call.
Few municipalities say that so plainly, and for a buyer it is the cheapest due diligence available. If a listing says the roof, the furnace or the addition was done in a particular year, the department can tell you whether an inspection actually happened and when.
It is worth knowing what the sequence should look like. On a build, the Township inspects groundwater at excavation, then the footing before the pour, then the foundation or basement, backfill, floor joists and decking, rough framing, insulation, and finally occupancy. Electrical runs service, rough and final. A final certificate of occupancy cannot be issued until the electrical, mechanical and plumbing inspectors have each given final approval — and not until the address is displayed on the property, in numerals at least four inches high in a contrasting color.
The Township also defines a second, lesser certificate that is worth recognizing if you meet one: a temporary occupancy to stock only, issued where work is incomplete enough that the site would be unsafe to occupy but finished enough to move belongings in. That is not the same as a final, and on a new or recently completed property it is a distinction worth confirming.
Timing here needs respect. The Township asks applicants to allow 10 to 21 business days for plan review and a further 7 to 15 for permit approval, and it is candid that its inspectors are part-time, attend continuing education through the year, and may not always be available — hence 24 hours notice for any inspection. Building inspections run weekday mornings, electrical late afternoons Monday to Thursday, and mechanical and plumbing on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.
Under its own ordinance the Township has assumed responsibility for administering and enforcing the state construction codes within its limits, so unlike several townships in this project the records are here rather than at the county. The code of ordinances carries the detail.
Stormwater
The Department of Public Works publishes the full set of documents behind the Township’s municipal separate storm sewer system permit: the MS4 permit itself, an illicit discharge elimination plan, an enforcement response procedure, public education and participation plans, and post-construction stormwater control documents.
An illicit discharge elimination plan sounds like a document for engineers, and mostly it is. But the domestic end of it is simple: the storm system is supposed to carry rain, and only rain. Anything else that finds its way in — a sanitary connection that should not be there, a washing machine or softener draining to a yard drain, a sump pumping something other than groundwater — is what the plan exists to find.
On an inspection, the parts of that we can see are the ones worth reporting: where the downspouts go, where the sump discharges, whether a laundry or treatment appliance drains somewhere it should not, and whether there is a yard drain or catch basin on the property and what appears to feed it. Where a discharge line disappears underground to a destination nobody can name, that is worth asking the DPW about rather than guessing.
The department also publishes its annual water quality report, current water and sewer rates, a grease trap maintenance sheet and a leak detection checklist. We do not test water — that is a separate discipline with its own certified laboratories, and the published report is the authoritative source for what is in the supply. On a property with a private well and septic system, the county health department is the office that permits and evaluates both, and its approval appears on the Township’s own permit checklist for that reason.
The buried line
Where a property here is on the public sewer, the buried lateral running from the building to the main is the one component no visual inspection reaches — and in a township that inspects groundwater before it inspects footings, it is running through ground that holds water.
That matters. A cracked or open joint in a lateral above the water table lets sewage out. The same defect below it lets groundwater in, which loads the pipe, loads the system and shows up as a line that runs slow for reasons nobody can see from a fixture. Either way the evidence is inside the pipe.
The housing here spans seven decades fairly evenly, so the age of that lateral depends entirely on the house: seventy years on a 1950s property, thirty on a 1990s one, with landscaping of the same age above it. We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what Fort Gratiot laterals are generally made of. On a property with a septic system, the question belongs to the county health department rather than to us.
A sewer camera inspection records what is actually inside the line: 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 Fort Gratiot Township — Building Department, inspections and permit requirements · Fort Gratiot Township — Department of Public Works and stormwater documents · Fort Gratiot Charter Township — code of ordinances. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Why choose us
Five reasons people here pick us as their Fort Gratiot 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
It is the first building inspection on the Township’s list, carried out at the time of excavation — before the footing is poured. The point is to establish how high the water sits and what the foundation has to be designed around. We have not found another municipality in this region that inspects groundwater before footings, and on a Lake Huron shoreline township it is a sensible first question.
That the below-grade part of the building is where the attention belongs. We look closely at the basement or crawlspace: the foundation walls, efflorescence and staining and how high it runs, evidence of past water at the wall-floor joint, the slab, and any sump — the pit, the pump, whether there is a backup, and where the discharge goes. Outside, the grading and where the downspouts discharge. A dry basement on a dry day proves nothing by itself; the evidence is what matters.
It is worth establishing, because the Township’s permit checklist contemplates both. It can require an EGLE high risk erosion permit or a wetland assessment, and for FEMA flood zone construction either a letter of map amendment or a professional elevation survey showing the construction is above flood levels — or plans showing flood zone standards will be met if it is not. These designations attach to the land rather than the building.
Call the Building Department. The Township states that inspection histories are computerized and that the information can be obtained by a quick phone call. That is unusually open, and it is the cheapest due diligence available — if a listing claims work was done in a particular year, the department can tell you whether an inspection actually happened.
A lesser certificate the Township defines for buildings where work is incomplete enough that the site would be unsafe to occupy but finished enough to move belongings in — a moving company delivering furniture, or a store stocking shelves. It is not a final certificate of occupancy. A final requires the electrical, mechanical and plumbing inspectors to have each given final approval, and the address to be displayed on the property first.
Longer than most people plan for. The Township asks applicants to allow 10 to 21 business days for plan review and a further 7 to 15 business days for permit approval, and it is candid that its inspectors are part-time and may not always be available — so 24 hours notice is required for inspections, which run in narrow daily windows by trade.
Spread more evenly than almost anywhere else we work. Of about 5,012 housing units, 883 date from the 1990s, 745 from the 2000s, 730 from the 1950s, 684 from the 1970s and 668 from the 1960s, with 406 predating 1940 and nearly 200 built since 2010. Around 76% is single-family detached. The specific building tells you far more here than the township does.
On a public sewer, yes — and the groundwater is the reason. A defect in a lateral above the water table lets sewage out; the same defect below it lets groundwater in, which loads the line and shows up as slow drainage nobody can explain from a fixture. We will not guess a material from a build year. Putting a camera down the line documents roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages where they exist, and is added to the same appointment.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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From the blog
October 22, 2017
November 23, 2020
Your local Fort Gratiot home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
