Fowlerville, Michigan
Looking for a Fowlerville home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Fowlerville, 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 Fowlerville 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 Fowlerville and across Livingston 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 Fowlerville 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 reportFowlerville housing stock
Fowlerville has roughly 1,363 housing units and about 61% of them are single-family detached. Age is the most useful single fact about a house before anyone has seen it. It narrows down what is worth checking first, and it is why two places of much the same size can need quite different inspections.
If the town has a defining decade it is the years before 1940, which accounts for 282 homes, around 21% of the housing stock.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $167,400. There are around 179 manufactured and mobile homes in Fowlerville. Those are a different inspection — the questions are about the frame, the anchoring and the skirting rather than a basement.
Treat this as a starting list, not a diagnosis. A Fowlerville home inspector checks these things early in a home of this age and then records what is genuinely there, which is often not what the era would suggest.
Housing figures: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2022 five-year estimates.
When Fowlerville was built
85% of homes here run on utility gas.
Local knowledge
Fowlerville publishes something that turns a municipal maintenance notice into a diagnostic test for your own plumbing, and it is the most useful thing on the Village website.
When the Village cleans its sanitary sewer lines, it warns residents that air can vent back into a home through the sewer service line and the plumbing vent system, making water in a toilet bowl bubble, surge, or occasionally splash. It then lists the reasons that happens — and one of them is a plugged roof vent.
That is precisely an inspection finding. Every plumbing system in a house vents through the roof, and those vent terminations get blocked by nests, debris, ice or careless roofing work. A blocked vent makes drains gurgle, empties traps, lets smells back into a house, and — as the Village points out — makes a toilet react badly when the sewer main is cleaned.
The Village also notes that a smell after cleaning may simply be dry traps, and that running the water for a few minutes should clear it. That is worth knowing on any house that has stood empty, which describes a great many properties between listing and closing.
The other local matter worth understanding before you buy is the utility bill. The Village has both flat-rate and metered customers, and the fixed portion of the bill is set by meter size on a published table. It is a substantial standing charge, and it is worth working into the carrying cost of a property rather than discovering in October.
Before you buy
Vents and traps
The Village’s public works page explains its sewer cleaning process plainly: a nozzle is propelled from one manhole to the next under high pressure, then pulled back so the water scours the inside of the pipe, with the debris vacuumed out at the manhole.
The side effect is air moving where it does not normally move. The Village lists five reasons a home might feel it: air movement from normal cleaning, the higher pressure needed on lines with a steep slope, sewer lines running close to the building, a plugged roof vent, and the size and complexity of the home’s own ventilation system.
Three of those five are about the property rather than the Village. And a plugged roof vent is something we look for on every inspection.
A plumbing vent stack does two jobs: it lets air into the drain system so water can flow, and it lets sewer gas out above the roofline. When one blocks — with a nest, with debris, with ice in a Michigan winter, or because roofing work covered it — the symptoms are ordinary enough that people live with them. Drains gurgle. A basin empties slowly. A trap siphons dry and the room smells. And when something changes the pressure in the main, the nearest toilet reacts.
On an inspection we look at vent terminations at the roof where they can be seen, at the accessible drain and vent arrangements inside, and at how fixtures behave under load — running more than one thing at once is precisely how a venting problem announces itself. We report what we find rather than diagnosing a system we cannot see inside.
Dry traps are the other half of the story, and they are the classic finding on a house that has been empty. A floor drain, a basement laundry tub or a guest bathroom that has not been used for weeks will smell for a reason that costs nothing to fix. The Village’s own advice — run the water for a few minutes — is exactly right.
The utility bill
The Village’s water department page publishes two separate rate schedules, one for flat-rate residential customers and one for metered customers. That is unusual: most communities have moved entirely to meters.
Both carry a substantial minimum quarterly charge before any usage is counted, with a compost fee added on top, and metered customers pay per thousand gallons above an included allowance. On the metered side the ready-to-serve component is calculated from meter size using a published multiplier table adopted by the Village in 2023 — and the difference between a small domestic meter and a large one is very large indeed.
For a buyer that has two practical consequences. The fixed portion of the bill is a real carrying cost that has nothing to do with how much water you use, and on a property with an oversized meter it is worth asking whether the meter still matches the use.
Billing is quarterly, and the Village notes plainly that not receiving a bill does not waive late charges. Metered customers with the right endpoints can view their usage through an online portal, which is the easiest way to spot a leak — consumption that does not match the household is usually the first sign, and it shows up well before any damage does.
The Village flushes its fire hydrants twice a year, which it says clears sediment from the lines and confirms the hydrants work, and warns that the process often produces cloudy or discolored water without the safety of the supply being diminished. If it happens, its advice is to run an outside faucet.
We do not test water. Water testing goes through a certified laboratory, and questions about the supply go to the Village.
Permits
Building permits here come from the Livingston County Building Department, which the Village links directly from its own permits and ordinances page. The Village keeps its own document center of permit forms alongside its ordinances.
So a property’s history sits in two places, and finding nothing at the Village office tells you nothing about what the county holds. On any property with obvious alterations — a finished basement, an addition, a deck, a converted porch — both are worth requesting.
The same page carries the Village’s utility locating guidance, and its list of what triggers a call is more concrete than most: decks and patios, trees or shrubs, swing sets, signs, fountains, tents, fences, mailbox posts, room additions, gardens, swimming pools and landscaping. Three business days’ notice is required.
A mailbox post and a garden are on that list for a reason. Utility services run underground here as everywhere, and the depth at which someone once buried a line is not something you can guess at from the surface.
A buyer’s inspection is not a permit search and does not locate buried utilities. It reports the condition and apparent function of the roof, structure, foundation, drainage, electrical, heating and cooling, plumbing and the accessible interior.
The housing
The housing here arrived in three distinct groups: 282 units predating 1940, 225 from the 1970s, and 221 from the 1990s, with very little added since 2010.
On a prewar house the inspection reads accumulated alteration across eighty-five years or more. Electrical extended in stages by different hands, with the coherence of the upgrades mattering more than their date. Plumbing renewed in part, leaving material transitions worth examining — and, in a village where vent problems are common enough to make the municipal notices, drain and vent layouts that are frequently original with newer fixtures hung off them. Insulation and ventilation retrofitted into buildings designed without either. Roofs on their fourth or fifth covering.
On the 1970s and 1990s stock the pattern shifts toward replacement cycles: second and third generation mechanical equipment, windows replaced once, and grading that has settled since the build.
With about 39% of the housing something other than a detached house, attached and multi-unit property comes up regularly. On a condominium the association documents decide where your responsibility ends, and 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.
The buried line
The Village cleans the sewer mains. The service line running from the building out to those mains is the property owner’s, and it is not part of that program.
That is the pipe where roots get in, where a joint displaces, and where a belly forms — and it is the pipe that sits between your fixtures and a main under high-pressure cleaning. On a prewar house it may have been in the ground the better part of a century.
We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what Fowlerville 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. It is added to the same appointment rather than booked separately, and on a property where drains gurgle or a toilet behaves oddly it answers the question the Village’s notice raises.
You can read what our clients say, look through answers to common questions, or get in touch about a specific address in Fowlerville — including working out whether it is in the Village or in one of the two townships that share the postal name.
Local information from Village of Fowlerville — Department of Public Works, sewer cleaning notices and hydrant flushing · Village of Fowlerville — Water Department, rates and the meter multiplier table · Village of Fowlerville — permits, ordinances and utility locating guidance. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Radon in Livingston 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 · Livingston County radon and inspection coverage
Zone from the EPA Map of Radon Zones.
Why choose us
Five reasons people here pick us as their Fowlerville 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
Because air is moving where it normally does not. The Village lists five causes: normal cleaning operations, the higher pressure used on steeply sloped lines, sewer lines running close to the building, a plugged roof vent, and the size and complexity of the home’s own ventilation system. Three of those five are about the property rather than the Village.
Every plumbing system vents through the roof, letting air into the drains and gas out above the roofline. Blockages come from nests, debris, ice or roofing work. We look at vent terminations at the roof where they can be seen, at the accessible drain and vent arrangements inside, and at how fixtures behave when several are run at once — which is how a venting problem shows itself.
Often not. The Village notes that a smell may simply be dry traps and advises running the water for a few minutes. That is a common finding on any house that has stood empty between listing and closing, and it costs nothing to put right.
Because both the flat-rate and metered schedules carry a substantial minimum quarterly charge, with a compost fee on top. On the metered side the ready-to-serve component is calculated from meter size using a published multiplier table, so a larger meter means a much larger standing charge regardless of usage.
From the Livingston County Building Department, which the Village links directly. The Village keeps its own permit forms and ordinances separately, so a property’s history sits in two places and finding nothing at the Village office tells you nothing about the county file.
The Village flushes its fire hydrants twice a year to clear sediment from the lines and confirm the hydrants work. It notes that flushing often produces cloudy or discolored water, that this is difficult to avoid completely, and that the safety of the supply is not diminished. Its advice is to run an outside faucet.
No. Handy Township and Cohoctah Township both use the same postal name and are separate governments with their own rules and their own records. Confirm which one an address sits in before relying on any local requirement.
Yes, particularly if drains gurgle or a toilet behaves oddly. The Village cleans the mains, but the service line from the building out is the owner’s and is not part of that work. A camera inspection documents roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages where they exist, and is added to the same visit.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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Claim the Hero DiscountNeed a Fowlerville home inspector and not sure we reach you? Call 734-331-3269 and we will tell you.
Permits, assessing and property records for Fowlerville are handled by the Village of Fowlerville, not by us.
From the blog
October 22, 2017
April 5, 2024
Your local Fowlerville home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
