Ecorse, Michigan
Looking for an Ecorse home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Ecorse, 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 Ecorse 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 Ecorse 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 an Ecorse 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 reportEcorse housing stock
Ecorse has roughly 4,128 housing units and about 74% of them are single-family detached. The year a house went up decides more about what an inspection turns up than almost anything else about it, which is why it is where we start rather than where we finish.
More of it dates from the years before 1940 than from any other decade — 1,274 homes, roughly 31% of the town.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $52,000. There are around 204 manufactured and mobile homes in Ecorse. Those are a different inspection — the questions are about the frame, the anchoring and the skirting rather than a basement.
This is not a forecast for any one address. It is where an Ecorse home inspector starts in a home of this age — and whatever we actually find, it goes in the report with photographs.
Housing figures: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2022 five-year estimates.
When Ecorse was built
88% of homes here run on utility gas. Another 4 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Ecorse is an old river city, not a postwar suburb, and that shows up in almost everything an inspection looks at.
The town was incorporated as a village in 1902. Wayne County records that Ecorse “became a significant economic force in the region when its first steel mill, Michigan Steel Mill, began operation in 1923”, and that it incorporated as a city in 1941. Much of Downriver was built out after the Second World War. A good deal of Ecorse was already standing.
The numbers follow the history. The median build year here is 1953, so this is not a prewar town — but the single largest age group on the page is the one before 1940, which is unusual in this region. The City’s own 2023 Master Plan puts it in plainer language: the majority of housing units in Ecorse were constructed before 1959, and 91% of all units were built before 1979.
With a housing stock that established, the build year stops being the interesting question. What matters is what has happened to a particular house since — what has been replaced, what has been repaired, what is original and how much service life is left in it. That is what an inspection is for.
Before you buy
Two inspections, two purposes
This is the thing most buyers here ask about, and the City answers it better than we could.
Under Ecorse city code, it is unlawful to transfer a dwelling that does not have a current certificate of approval. The building department issues one only after it has inspected the dwelling and finds it meets the requirements of the applicable codes and ordinances of the city. The inspector completes a report noting all violations found, and those must be corrected before the certificate is issued — or, in lieu of correcting them first, the money to correct them can be placed in escrow with the building department and the work completed within six months of occupancy. A certificate of approval is valid for one year.
So a house you are buying in Ecorse will be inspected by the City. The natural next question is whether that makes your own inspection unnecessary, and the ordinance itself answers it: a certificate of approval “is not a warranty or guarantee that there are no defects in the dwelling”. It states that the inspection “is limited to visual inspection only”, and that the city “does not guarantee or approve by inference any latent, structural, or mechanical defects”.
None of that is a criticism of the City’s process. It is the City accurately describing the job it is doing — establishing code and ordinance compliance so the property can change hands. That is a real and useful thing, and a home inspection does not replace it or satisfy it.
A buyer’s inspection is aimed at a different target: condition, and what it is going to mean for you. Roof, structure, foundation, drainage, electrical, heating and cooling, plumbing and the accessible interior — what is failing now, what is near the end of its service life, and what to plan for. Both happen before the same closing, and they are not substitutes for one another.
What happened since
The City is candid about the age of its housing, and about what it wants to do with it.
The 2023 Master Plan sets out strategies for the preservation and rehabilitation of existing built areas, alongside redevelopment, neighborhood and commercial improvement and downtown development. It notes that most of the housing units in Ecorse were constructed over 40 years ago, and among its housing objectives are encouraging a housing rehabilitation program and using code enforcement to maintain and upgrade the housing stock.
Read that from a buyer’s seat and it means something specific. A house that has stood for 70 or 90 years has had a furnace, a roof, a service panel, water heaters and windows replaced — once, several times, or not at all. Which of those is true for the house in front of you is not something the construction year can tell you, and we will not pretend otherwise. The inspection establishes what is actually installed and what condition it is in now.
Paper history helps too. Ecorse publishes its records through BS&A Online, with a Building Department Record Search, a Property Sale Search, a Rental Property Search and assessing records. Worth knowing what it does and does not prove: a permit is not evidence that work is in good condition today, and no permit on file is not evidence that work was done badly. It is context for what you are looking at, and on a substantially renovated house it is useful context.
The buried line
The private sewer lateral runs underground from the house to the city main, and a standard visual inspection cannot see inside it.
It is tempting, on housing this old, to reason from the build year to the pipe — that a 1930s Ecorse house must have one material and a 1955 house another. We will not do that, because it is not sound. We have no authoritative basis for saying what Ecorse laterals are generally made of, and a house that old has had decades in which sections could have been replaced. The age of the building establishes neither the material nor the condition of what is buried.
What settles it is looking. A sewer camera inspection runs a camera down the line and records what is actually there — roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages where they exist, and a clear line where they do not. On an older property it is one of the few ways to replace an assumption with a picture, and it is added to the same visit rather than booked separately.
Water and the river
Wayne County describes Ecorse as a Downriver community bordered by the Detroit River on the east, surrounded by River Rouge, Detroit, Lincoln Park and Wyandotte. The river is not a backdrop here; it is the edge of the city and part of why the city exists.
It is worth being careful about what follows from that. Being near the Detroit River does not establish that a house floods, or that it has a moisture problem, and we are not aware of City documentation establishing a general residential flooding or sewer-backup pattern across Ecorse. We are not going to manufacture one out of geography.
What is genuinely true is that water management is a property-by-property matter, and it deserves attention on any lot — more so on one close to the water. During an inspection we look at accessible grading, gutters and downspouts, foundation conditions, the basement or crawlspace and sump equipment where it is present, and we document what is visibly there rather than what the map suggests.
Ecorse is also a genuinely industrial and commercial city — Wayne County names rolled and sheet metal, packaging and meat processing among its chief industries, and the Master Plan addresses commercial areas and downtown development directly. Commercial building inspections follow the CCPIA standard, and radon testing and mold inspection and testing can be added to either a residential or a commercial visit.
Local information from City of Ecorse — Building Department · City of Ecorse — Code of Ordinances · City of Ecorse — 2023 Master Plan · Wayne County — Ecorse community profile · BS&A Online — City of Ecorse records. 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. That puts Ecorse at the calmer end of Michigan’s radon picture, which is worth saying out loud rather than glossing over. 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. The zone describes a county. The only result that describes your basement is the one measured in it.
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 Ecorse 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
If you ask my ex wives, I’m very hard to please. I generally refuse to leave reviews unless I was very impressed or very disappointed; this is one of those times. I priced multiple companies, and this one was on the higher cost side. However, this is one example of you get what you pay for. Joe was my inspector. He was extremely detailed, listened to all of my concerns, gave honest solutions, and followed through with every question. I applaud his level of detail and professionalism. Excellent people skills with a lot of shareable knowledge. Working with him placed many of my concerns at ease when considering the purchase of a home.
QuinnEcorse, MIOra 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, MIWhat happens
Questions
Yes. Ecorse city code makes it unlawful to transfer a dwelling that does not have a current certificate of approval. The building department issues one only after it has inspected the dwelling and finds that it meets the requirements of the applicable codes and ordinances of the city, and the inspector’s report notes all violations found. Violations must be corrected before the certificate is issued, or the money to correct them placed in escrow with the building department and the work finished within six months of occupancy. A certificate of approval is valid for one year. The City’s Building Department handles the application and the fee.
Yes, and the ordinance itself explains why. A certificate of approval “is not a warranty or guarantee that there are no defects in the dwelling”; the City states that its inspection “is limited to visual inspection only” and that it “does not guarantee or approve by inference any latent, structural, or mechanical defects”. The City is establishing code and ordinance compliance so the property can transfer, which a home inspection does not do and cannot replace. An independent home inspection answers a different question — the condition of the roof, structure, foundation, drainage, electrical, heating and cooling, plumbing and accessible interior, and what you should be planning for. The two run alongside each other before the same closing.
Older than most of Downriver. The median build year is 1953, so it is not accurate to call it a prewar town — but the largest single age group is the one built before 1940, at roughly 31% of about 4,128 housing units, which is unusual for this region. The City’s 2023 Master Plan says the majority of units were constructed before 1959 and that 91% of all units were built before 1979. That history is not accidental: Ecorse was incorporated as a village in 1902 and, as Wayne County puts it, became a significant economic force in the region when Michigan Steel Mill began operation in 1923.
Because on housing this established, what has been done since matters more than what was built originally. The City’s 2023 Master Plan is built around the preservation and rehabilitation of existing built areas and notes that most Ecorse housing units were constructed over 40 years ago, so a given house may have been through several rounds of work. Ecorse publishes its records through BS&A Online, including a Building Department Record Search and a Property Sale Search. Treat it as context rather than proof: a permit does not establish that work is in good condition today, and the absence of one does not establish that work was done badly.
It is worth considering, and the reason is what nobody can tell you from the outside. The private sewer lateral is buried between the house and the city main, and a standard visual inspection cannot see inside it. The age of the house does not establish what that line is made of or what condition it is in — we would not guess at a material from a build year, and sections of any line that old may have been replaced along the way. Putting a camera down the line documents its accessible interior directly: roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages where they exist. It is added to the same appointment.
It makes site conditions worth extra attention, but it does not establish a problem. Wayne County describes Ecorse as bordered by the Detroit River on the east, so a fair number of properties sit close to the water. Proximity alone does not mean a house floods or has a moisture problem, and we are not aware of City documentation establishing a general residential flooding or sewer-backup pattern across Ecorse — so we will not claim one. What we do is assess the actual property: accessible grading, gutters and downspouts, foundation conditions, the basement or crawlspace, and sump equipment where it is present.
Yes. You can book an Ecorse home inspector with us seven days a week, and we cover the rest of Wayne County too.
A home inspection report reaches you within 24 hours. Commercial buildings are 24 to 72 hours depending on size, a radon result comes at the end of the 48-hour test, and mold samples come back from the lab in one to three business days.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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Claim the Hero DiscountNeed an Ecorse home inspector and not sure we reach you? Call 734-331-3269 and we will tell you.
Permits, assessing and property records for Ecorse are handled by Ecorse, Michigan, not by us.
From the blog
October 22, 2017
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Your local Ecorse home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
