Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan
Looking for a Grosse Pointe Woods home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Grosse Pointe Woods, 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 Grosse Pointe Woods 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 Grosse Pointe Woods and across Wayne 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 Grosse Pointe Woods 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 reportGrosse Pointe Woods housing stock
Grosse Pointe Woods has roughly 6,690 housing units and about 92% 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 1950s — 2,380 homes, around 36% of the town. At 92% single-family it is almost entirely detached houses, so the inspection is nearly always of a whole building rather than one unit inside one.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $309,700. 90% are owner-occupied, which is high even for this area.
None of this is a prediction about a particular house. It is where a Grosse Pointe Woods 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 Grosse Pointe Woods was built
89% of homes here run on utility gas, and 4 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 119 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Grosse Pointe Woods has the strictest point-of-sale requirement of any city we write about, and the sentence that matters is short: the buyer cannot occupy the building without first obtaining the Certificate of Occupancy.
The City requires a Certificate of Occupancy whenever there is a change of ownership of a home or business, or on new residential construction. An inspection is carried out by the Code Official, and the certificate is issued once all code violations are corrected. It is then valid for two years from the date of application.
Compare that with how neighboring cities handle the same moment. Some let a property sell with violations outstanding provided the buyer signs a document accepting them. Some let you take possession and only penalize occupancy. Here the violations have to be fixed before anyone moves in, which puts the City’s inspection squarely on the critical path of your closing.
The housing makes that consequential: of about 6,690 units, roughly 2,380 date from the 1950s and 1,862 from the 1940s, with 756 predating 1940 — around 90% of the city was built before 1970. About 92% is single-family detached.
Before you buy
The Certificate of Occupancy
Eleven of the cities we write about run some form of inspection tied to a sale. This is the version with the sharpest teeth.
The City’s permit information states that whenever there is a change of ownership of a home or business, or new residential construction, a Certificate of Occupancy is required; that an inspection of the property is conducted by the Code Official; that the buyer or tenant cannot occupy the building without having first obtained that certificate; and that it is issued when all code violations are corrected, valid for two years from the date of application.
Read that in order and the practical consequence is clear. An inspection finds violations. Those violations get corrected. Only then does the certificate issue, and only then can anybody move in. Whoever is paying for those corrections — and that is a negotiation, not a rule — the work has to happen before the keys are useful.
Which is exactly why knowing the condition of the building in advance is worth more here than almost anywhere. A buyer’s inspection is independent of the City and written for you: the roof, structure, foundation, drainage, electrical, heating and cooling, plumbing and accessible interior, with what is failing, what is near the end of its service life and what to plan for. On a house that is eighty years old, having that report in hand while the City’s list is still being written is the difference between negotiating and reacting.
The City also maintains a Property Maintenance Code setting minimum maintenance standards for buildings and property, which it says is available free from the City Clerk’s office.
The permit list
Grosse Pointe Woods requires permits for a longer list of work than most cities, which makes the permit history here genuinely informative.
Permits are required for new construction; major electrical, plumbing, heating, cooling and mechanical installations; additions and alterations to homes and accessory buildings; re-roofing; aluminum or vinyl siding installation; rebuilding masonry chimneys or fireplaces; installing fences, swimming pools, sidewalks, driveways, porches, sewers and decks; and signs and awnings. The City also publishes applications for concrete and impervious surfaces, EV chargers, generators, dumpsters and storage pods, a work compliance affidavit and a permit extension request.
On a house from the 1940s or 1950s, a roof, a re-side and a rebuilt chimney are three of the largest things that will have happened to it, and all three should have left a record here.
And then there is the form that stops people in their tracks: an air conditioning condensing unit replacement neighbor’s approval. Replacing an outdoor condenser in this city involves a document about the neighbor. We have not opened the form and are not going to describe what it requires — but if a condenser replacement is in your first-year plan, and on eighty-year-old housing it often is, that is a conversation to have with the Building Department and possibly with the person next door.
Alterations to commercial structures take a different route again, requiring an interview before the Planning Commission, with an appeal available to the City Council’s Board of Appeal.
If you are buying a rental
The rental requirement here is unusual in what it asks for.
Rental properties require a Certificate of Approval and must be registered with the Building Department. The registration includes the name, address and telephone number of the property owner, of the designated agent, and of the tenants — and each tenant must be verified as an adult or a minor.
Then the clock: on a change of tenants, the property owner or agent has 30 days to register the new tenants with the Building Department. Most cities register the property. This one registers the people in it, and expects to be told when they change.
For a buyer of income property that is a standing obligation attached to the building, not a one-off at purchase. Worth building into how you plan to manage it, and worth confirming with the Building Department where the property currently stands.
Water and the buried line
The City’s water division is responsible for over 58 miles of water main. It notifies residents door to door when a main breaks or the water is to be turned off — though usually not overnight, since most repairs are finished by morning — and explains that discolored water after a disturbance is natural sediment and not harmful, clearing if you run the tap. It publishes water quality reports and a page of health information about lead, and offers a metering service that can alert an owner to possible leaks on their property.
What none of that covers is the sanitary lateral running from the house to the sewer main, and no visual inspection reaches inside it. On a house from the 1940s or 1950s that pipe has been in the ground seventy to eighty years, under streets lined with fully mature trees — ample time 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 laterals here are generally made of.
It is worth adding that sewers appear on the City’s permit list, so sewer work on a property should have left a record — which is more than most cities can offer.
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 — and it is added to the same visit rather than booked separately. Alongside it, commercial building inspections follow the CCPIA standard, and radon testing or mold inspection and testing can be added to a residential or commercial visit.
Eighty-year-old houses
With around 90% of the city built before 1970 and the largest decades being the 1940s and 1950s, the typical inspection here is a well-built house that is now seventy-five or eighty years old.
Nothing mechanical in it is original. The roof is on its third or fourth covering, the heating has turned over at least twice, air conditioning was retrofitted long after construction, and the electrical service has usually been upgraded once and extended several times. Masonry chimneys of this era frequently need rebuilding, which is why the City lists that work separately on its permit schedule.
What we report is what is installed now, its condition, what is at or past the end of its service life, and what could not be seen. On a house this age the last of those matters as much as the first — behind plaster, under finished basement ceilings, and inside chimney flues there is usually a good deal we cannot reach, and we say so rather than implying otherwise.
Given the City’s certificate requirement, that report also does a second job: it tells you, before the Code Official’s list arrives, roughly what is likely to be on it.
Local information from City of Grosse Pointe Woods — permit information and Certificate of Occupancy · City of Grosse Pointe Woods — water and sewer · City of Grosse Pointe Woods — code enforcement. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Radon in Wayne County
Zone 3 is the lowest of the three EPA categories — the predicted average indoor level across the county is below 2 pCi/L. So Grosse Pointe Woods is not where Michigan’s alarming radon numbers are, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What a zone cannot tell you is anything about one house: 17% of tests actually run in Wayne County still came back at or above the EPA’s 4 pCi/L action level, which is about one in six. A zone is a prediction of an average, and nobody lives in 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 · Wayne 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 Grosse Pointe Woods 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
Ora from Trademark did an incredible job with the inspection and sewer scope of the home I am in the process of buying. He was very thorough, explained everything to me from the start, and made it all super easy to understand which definitely helped to put me at ease a bit more. Highly recommend this company!
Mariah HartmanWestland, MIJim was prompt and thorough during the mold testing. Clearly gave us an explanation about mold and testing process he was going to conduct. Testing was followed by a written report. I would recommend everyone use a third party to test mold, independent from the company conducting remediation work. I would hire Trademark again and strongly recommend them.
Alberto PicconeNorthville, MICowboy “Jim” just did Mold Testing in my parents’ basement. He was Professional, explained the what, how and yet of everything to my Senior parents. Our results came back super quick. He even referred us to the resources on the Trademark website for me to use to fix the leaky basement. It’s 1 stop shopping with Trademark.
Becky JohnsonWayne, MIWhat happens
Questions
Yes, and it is the strictest version we have found. The City requires a Certificate of Occupancy whenever there is a change of ownership of a home or business, or on new residential construction. An inspection is carried out by the Code Official, and the certificate is issued when all code violations are corrected. It is valid for two years from the date of application.
No. The City states plainly that the buyer or tenant of a property cannot occupy the building without having first obtained the Certificate of Occupancy from the Code Official. Because the certificate only issues once all code violations are corrected, that work sits on the critical path between your closing and your move. Who pays for it is a negotiation; that it has to happen is not.
Materially. Some cities in this region allow a property to sell with violations outstanding provided the buyer signs a document accepting responsibility for them. Others allow possession and penalize only early occupancy. Grosse Pointe Woods requires the violations to be corrected before anyone occupies. Assuming a neighboring city’s rules apply here would be an expensive mistake.
The City publishes a form titled air conditioning condensing unit replacement — neighbor’s approval, among its permit documents. We have not opened it and are not going to describe what it requires. What we can say is that if a condenser replacement is in your plans — and on eighty-year-old housing it often is — that is a conversation to have with the Building Department early, and possibly with the person next door.
More than most cities. New construction; major electrical, plumbing, heating, cooling and mechanical installations; additions and alterations to homes and accessory buildings; re-roofing; aluminum or vinyl siding installation; rebuilding masonry chimneys or fireplaces; fences, swimming pools, sidewalks, driveways, porches, sewers and decks; and signs and awnings. On an older house, that means a roof, a re-side and a rebuilt chimney should all have left a record.
More than the property. Rentals require a Certificate of Approval and registration with the Building Department, and the registration includes the name, address and telephone number of the owner, the designated agent and the tenants — with each tenant verified as an adult or a minor. On a change of tenants, the owner or agent has 30 days to register the new ones. That is a standing obligation attached to the building, not a one-off at purchase.
Old and remarkably consistent. Of about 6,690 housing units, roughly 2,380 date from the 1950s and 1,862 from the 1940s, with 756 predating 1940 and 1,020 from the 1960s — around 90% of the city was built before 1970. About 92% is single-family detached. Nothing mechanical in a house that age is original, and masonry chimneys of the era frequently need rebuilding.
Yes. The buried lateral running from the house to the sewer main is the one component no visual inspection reaches, and on a 1940s or 1950s house it has been in the ground seventy to eighty years under streets of fully mature trees. Sewers do appear on the City’s permit list, so past work may show in the record. 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
May 18, 2024
Your local Grosse Pointe Woods home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
