Keego Harbor, Michigan
Looking for a Keego Harbor home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Keego Harbor, 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 Keego Harbor 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 Keego Harbor 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 Keego Harbor 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 reportKeego Harbor housing stock
Keego Harbor has roughly 1,472 housing units and about 67% 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 years before 1940 — 424 homes, around 29% of the town.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $226,600.
None of this is a prediction about a particular house. It is where a Keego Harbor 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 Keego Harbor was built
77% of homes here run on utility gas, and 12 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.
Local knowledge
Keego Harbor is a small city that contracts out almost everything technical, and knowing who actually holds what saves a great deal of time when you are buying here.
The building department is run by a team of contracted professionals — a building official, inspectors and plan review specialists — and the City is candid that all of them serve on a part-time basis. It publishes each inspector’s schedule, and the windows are narrow: building inspections happen on weekday mornings and finish at eleven, while the trade inspectors each keep their own few hours on their own few days. Everything is booked through City Hall with at least twenty-four hours notice, rather than with the inspector directly.
Water and sewer are not the City’s at all. They are provided through a partnership with the Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner, which owns and operates much of the infrastructure, administers the customer accounts and bills residents and businesses directly. Your water bill comes from the county, not the city.
So a property here has its building history at City Hall and its utility history, standards and connection permits with the county. Both are worth asking about, and asking the wrong one first costs an afternoon.
The housing has an old core and a recent edge. Of roughly 1,472 units, 424 — 29% — predate 1940, with 316 from the 1970s and 287 built since 2000, while the 1980s and 1990s together account for only about 124 units.
Before you buy
Permits
The City’s building services page lists its inspectors alongside the hours each one works, which is unusually transparent and unusually useful if you are planning work around a closing.
The head building official inspects on weekday mornings, finishing at eleven. The electrical inspector works two mornings into the early afternoon. Mechanical and plumbing inspections are shared between two people covering different days and different windows. All of it is scheduled through City Hall with at least a day’s notice.
On a project needing a rough inspection followed by a final, with electrical, mechanical and plumbing in between, that schedule is the thing most likely to determine your timetable — not the work itself.
The permit set has a few items worth noticing on the applications page. Alongside building, zoning and the trade permits sit a driveway permit, an RV and trailer parking permit, a demolition permit, rental registration, and an abandoned residential property application — that last one a reminder that distressed property has its own process here.
Contractor registration is handled differently from most places: it can only be completed at the moment a permit is being pulled, lasts a year, and needs copies of a driver’s license and a contractor license. That is a small detail with a real consequence — a contractor who has not worked in the city for over a year has to re-register before they can pull anything.
A buyer’s inspection is not a permit search and does not replace one. It reports the condition and apparent function of the roof, structure, foundation, drainage, electrical, heating and cooling, plumbing and the accessible interior — and tells you which parts of a property are worth asking the City about.
Water and sewer
The City is clear about the arrangement on its water and sewer page: the county water resources commissioner owns and operates much of the infrastructure, administers customer accounts, and bills residents and businesses directly.
For an owner that means the county is who you contact to start, transfer or close service, to request a final bill when moving, to report a water or sewer service issue, or to ask about assistance programs. Several payment routes are offered, including cash payment at retail locations, automatic payments and payment by phone.
For anyone building, the county sets the standards governing work on the public water and sewer system — permit applications, standard specifications and construction details, surety bond and insurance requirements, engineering standards, inspection and testing requirements, and connection procedures. Applications go to the county rather than the City.
That matters most at a closing. A utility account held by a county agency rather than the city is one more thing to transfer, and a final bill request is worth making rather than assuming.
We do not test water and we do not determine buried service line materials. What an inspection reports is the visible supply piping inside the building where accessible, the materials we can actually see, and any point where the material changes or a repair has been made — which on housing where nearly a third predates 1940 is usually a story told in stages.
Prewar houses
The 424 units here that predate 1940 are the defining part of this city’s housing, and many began as modest lake-country property rather than as year-round family homes.
That history shows up in the inspection. Insulation and ventilation are often thin or absent in places nobody has opened since. Foundations and crawl spaces were frequently built shallow and light. Plumbing may run through unheated space on a route that made sense when a building was used seasonally. Heating has usually been added or upgraded in stages, sometimes into a chimney never intended for it.
Electrical tells the same story. The original service was sized for lighting and little else, nearly all have been upgraded, and the depth of those upgrades varies from a genuine rewire to a new panel with original distribution behind it. Circuits added in stages by different hands, and mixed generations of wiring meeting in one box, are ordinary findings.
None of that makes an older Keego Harbor house a poor buy — plenty have been carefully converted and are excellent. But the questions are different from those you would ask of a 2000s build, and they concentrate in the same places: insulation and ventilation, the route and protection of supply plumbing, the foundation and what sits under the floor, and whether the heating and its venting were properly matched to the building when they went in.
On the 287 units built since 2000 the questions invert entirely, toward the first round of turnover: an original roof reaching the end of its expected life, mechanical equipment being replaced for the first time, and grading that has settled since the build.
Water on the ground
Keego Harbor publishes a stormwater asset management plan and takes part in the regional municipal stormwater program, which is the usual arrangement for a community whose runoff reaches open water quickly.
On an individual property the question is more immediate: where does household water go? On a ninety-year-old house the grading has usually settled toward the wall rather than away from it, downspouts have often been shortened or redirected over the decades, and any sump arrangement was added long after the building rather than designed with it.
Ground near open water also carries a higher water table, and seasonal levels move. A basement or crawl space that behaves in August is not necessarily the same one in April.
On an inspection we report the fall of the ground around the building, the condition of gutters and where the downspouts terminate, where any sump discharge appears to go, and what the lowest level shows about water that has been there before. Where a discharge disappears into a buried pipe we say so rather than guessing at its destination.
Mold inspection and testing can be added where there is visible growth or a history of moisture, and radon testing can be added to any visit.
The buried line
The county owns the mains. The line running from the building out to the connection is still the property owner’s, and no visual inspection reaches inside it.
On one of the prewar houses that pipe may have been in the ground close to a century, under a lot with mature planting over it. On a 1970s house it is fifty years old. We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what Keego Harbor 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 this housing stock it is among the most useful things you can buy before closing.
We also offer commercial building inspections to the CCPIA standard for offices, retail, multifamily and warehouse property, which comes up in a city where about a third of the housing is something other than a detached house.
You can read what our clients say, look through answers to common questions, or get in touch about a specific address in Keego Harbor.
Local information from City of Keego Harbor — building services, contracted inspectors and their schedules · City of Keego Harbor — water and sewer services through the Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner · City of Keego Harbor — building permits and applications. 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 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 · 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 Keego Harbor 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
The Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner. The City provides service through a partnership under which the county owns and operates much of the infrastructure, administers customer accounts and bills residents and businesses directly. Starting, transferring or closing service, and requesting a final bill when moving, all go through the county.
The county. It sets the standards governing work on the public water and sewer system, including permit applications, specifications and construction details, surety bond and insurance requirements, engineering standards and inspection and testing requirements, and the applications are returned to the county rather than the City.
Through City Hall, with at least twenty-four hours notice. The City explains that all its inspectors serve part-time and publishes each one’s hours — building inspections run on weekday mornings and finish at eleven, with the trade inspectors keeping their own days and windows.
Yes, and the timing is specific: registration can only be completed at the moment a permit is being pulled, is good for one year, and requires copies of a driver’s license and a contractor license. A contractor who has not worked in the city for over a year has to re-register.
Building, zoning, electrical, mechanical, plumbing and demolition permits, along with a driveway permit, an RV and trailer parking permit, rental registration and an abandoned residential property application. If you are unsure which applies, the City asks that you contact City Hall before starting work.
About 424 of roughly 1,472 units — 29% — predate 1940, with 316 from the 1970s and 287 built since 2000. The 1980s and 1990s together account for only around 124 units, so most properties fall into either the old group or the recent one.
No to both. Water testing goes through a certified laboratory, and questions about the supply go to the county. We report the visible supply piping inside the building where accessible, the materials we can actually see, and any point where the material changes or a repair has been made.
On this housing stock, yes. The line from the building to the connection is still the owner’s, on a prewar house it may have been in the ground close to a century, and mature planting has had the same time to find it. 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 Keego Harbor home inspector and not sure we reach you? Call 734-331-3269 and we will tell you.
Permits, assessing and property records for Keego Harbor are handled by Keego Harbor, Michigan, not by us.
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Your local Keego Harbor home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
