Leonard, Michigan
Looking for a Leonard home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Leonard, 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 Leonard 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 Leonard 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 Leonard 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 reportLeonard housing stock
Leonard has roughly 138 housing units and about 100% of them are single-family detached. Homes built in a single stretch tend to wear out in the same places at the same time. That is why when somewhere was built is the first thing worth knowing about it.
The busiest stretch of building here was the years before 1940: 48 homes, about 35% of everything standing today. At 100% 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 $235,400. 92% are owner-occupied, which is high even for this area.
None of this says anything about the specific house you are buying. It is the shortlist a Leonard home inspector works through in a home of this age, and every item on it gets photographed and written up whichever way it turns out.
Housing figures: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2022 five-year estimates.
When Leonard was built
94% of homes here run on utility gas.
Local knowledge
Leonard is about 138 housing units, and every one of them is a single-family detached house. That is worth saying plainly because it settles a lot: an inspection here is always of a whole building rather than one unit inside one, there is no shared roof or shared wall, and there is no association standing between an owner and a repair. What the report describes is entirely yours to deal with.
The more interesting thing is what the village has published. On its permits and codes page, alongside the ordinances and the permit forms, sit two documents: a sewer analysis carried out by an engineering firm, and a set of sewerage survey results.
We downloaded the sewer analysis and could not read it — it is a scanned document with no text layer, so there is nothing in it we can quote and we are not going to characterize what it says. What we can tell you is that it exists, and that a village of 138 homes does not commission an engineering analysis of its sewer system for entertainment.
That is not a warning about anything. It is a prompt. If you are buying here, the sewer system is evidently a subject the village has been working on, which makes it a good subject to raise at the village office before you close rather than a year afterwards. The minutes and agendas are published too, if you want to follow it. Ask what the analysis concluded and whether anything is planned that would affect the street you are buying on.
A home inspection is not a code inspection or a permit search and we do not present it as one. What we establish is what is physically there and what condition it is in.
Before you buy
Permits
The village states that it has adopted the State of Michigan building, residential, mechanical, plumbing and electrical codes by reference rather than writing its own. For a buyer that is an orientation point worth having early: the standard applied to work on a house in Leonard is the state standard, not a local invention, and a contractor who already works across Oakland County is already working to it.
There is a named village Building Official, and the permit applications are published on the same page as the ordinances. One small thing to notice before you print anything: mechanical and electrical each have separate residential and commercial forms, so it is possible to arrive with the right permit for the wrong kind of building.
The village also publishes a zoning ordinance, a code of ordinances, a property maintenance code and a fee schedule. We have opened none of them and will not quote a figure or a rule from any — but they are all there, they are free, and reading the fee schedule before you plan work is a better use of ten minutes than most things you could do during a purchase.
What a buyer’s inspection contributes is the physical picture that makes those documents useful. We cannot tell you what is in the permit file. We can tell you what has been altered, which work looks professional and which does not, and where something has been added to the building — which is the specific list to take to the village office.
The housing
The median Leonard home was built in 1965, which puts the middle of this housing stock at about sixty years old. That is a specific decade with a specific list, and it is not the same list as the 1940s villages nearby.
Electrical service capacity is usually the first constraint. A house wired for a 1965 household was not wired for the way a modern one draws power, and the panel is often where you can read the history: added to more than once, mixed breaker types, and circuits extended into later work. Aluminum branch wiring becomes a live question toward the end of this period, and we report it where we find it so you can take it to an electrician rather than discover it later.
Plumbing in houses of this age has usually been renewed in part rather than in whole, which puts the interesting questions at the transitions between materials. Heating and water heating equipment will be several replacements deep. Roof coverings will be on a second or third generation, and what was done at the flashings and penetrations each time matters more than the age of the shingles.
Foundations of the period are typically poured concrete or block, and how they are doing depends far more on how water has been managed around the building than on how they were built. Where the downspouts terminate, whether there is a sump and where it discharges to, and how the ground falls away from the walls tell you more about a basement than a dry-day look at it will.
On entirely detached housing, outbuildings and garages are part of the property and we inspect them as such rather than glancing at them — they frequently carry their own electrical supply and their own roof and structural questions. Radon testing and mold inspection and testing can be added to any visit, and commercial building inspections to the CCPIA standard are available for commercial property.
The buried line
Whatever the village’s analysis concluded about the public system, it says nothing at all about the lateral running from a particular building out to the main. That pipe belongs to the property, it is the owner’s to repair, and no visual inspection reaches inside it.
On a median 1965 house that line is about sixty years old unless somebody has replaced it, and a replacement is rarely recorded anywhere a buyer will come across. We are not going to name a material from a build year — nothing published establishes what lines here are made of, and a guess in a report is worse than no statement at all.
This is the distinction that catches people out. A municipality can know its own system well, have surveyed it, and still have no view whatsoever on the sixty feet between your house and its main. That stretch is nobody’s job by default, and it is where the expensive surprises live.
A sewer camera inspection records what is actually inside it: roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages where they exist, and a clear run where they do not. On a village of detached houses with mature trees on the lots, roots at an old joint are the commonest finding there is.
It goes on the same appointment rather than a second visit, and we deliver a full written report with photographs, generally the same day. You can read what our clients say, browse answers to common questions, or get in touch about a specific address in Leonard.
Local information from Village of Leonard — permits, codes, ordinances and the sewer analysis · Village of Leonard — village website · Village of Leonard — minutes and agendas · Village of Leonard — community information. 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 an average taken across a whole county, and no house is 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 Leonard 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
An engineering firm’s analysis of the village sewer system, published on the permits and codes page alongside sewerage survey results. It is a scanned document with no text layer, so we could not read it and will not characterize it — ask the village what it concluded.
Not in itself. It is a prompt rather than a warning: the sewer system is evidently something the village has been working on, which makes it worth asking about before you close rather than a year later.
The village states it has adopted the State of Michigan building, residential, mechanical, plumbing and electrical codes by reference. The standard is the state one rather than a locally written rule.
From the village’s permits and codes page. Note that mechanical and electrical each have separate residential and commercial forms, so check you have the right one before you fill it in.
Not according to the census figures. All of roughly 138 housing units are single-family detached, so an inspection is always of a whole building.
The median build year is 1965, which puts the middle of the stock around sixty years old. Service capacity, aluminum branch wiring toward the end of that period, and equipment several replacements deep are the recurring questions.
Yes, alongside the zoning ordinance, the code of ordinances and a property maintenance code. We have not opened them and will not quote figures, but they are published and worth reading before you plan work.
On a median 1965 house the lateral is around sixty years old, and whatever the village knows about its own mains it has no view on the stretch between your house and them. A camera inspection goes on the same visit.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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From the blog
October 22, 2017
Your local Leonard home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
