Leslie, Michigan
Looking for a Leslie home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Leslie, 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 Leslie 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 Leslie and across Ingham 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 Leslie 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 reportLeslie housing stock
Leslie has roughly 837 housing units and about 76% 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 — 348 homes, roughly 42% of the town.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $121,100.
This is not a forecast for any one address. It is where a Leslie 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 Leslie was built
76% of homes here run on utility gas. Another 20 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Leslie is small enough that its entire city government is seven people, and most of them hold two or three jobs at once. The city manager is also the public works director. The chief of police is also code enforcement. The finance director is also the treasurer and the deputy clerk. And the city says that, unless noted otherwise, a message for any of them can be left on a single phone number.
That is not a complaint. In our experience it usually means faster, straighter answers than you get from a large authority with a switchboard. But it does change how you should approach a purchase here: gather your questions and put them to one person in one call, rather than expecting to be routed to a specialist for each.
It also means code enforcement and policing sit with the same officer, so a question about an ordinance issue on a property goes to the same place as everything else.
The housing is old. About 348 of roughly 837 units predate 1940 — some 42% of the city — with a second cluster of 120 in the 1970s. The 1980s barely register at all, and there is a modest recent tail including a handful of units built in the 2020s.
One thing the city does not publish is who issues or inspects building permits. There is no building department page. We are not going to guess, so make that your first call.
Before you buy
City services
Leslie’s services page is a model of the kind we wish more municipalities wrote. It sets out exactly what the city crew will collect, when, and under what conditions — and it is honest about the limits.
Curbside brush chipping runs in the first full week of each month, for brush already at the curb that Monday morning. Limbs must be no more than five inches in diameter and placed with the cut end toward the street, and other yard waste must not be mixed in. The primary purpose is clearing storm damage.
Two conditions are worth knowing before you move in. The first: the service is not to be used when a homeowner has hired an outside firm to take trees down — that contractor is expected to remove the brush themselves. The second, and the city says it outright: the service is not guaranteed, because other city work takes priority.
Curbside leaf collection runs each spring and fall, usually April and October. Leaves go in a long narrow row at the very edge of the street, and specifically not in bags. No brush mixed in, and the city asks you to call to confirm timing.
None of that is inspection business, but all of it is the kind of thing a new owner gets wrong in their first month, and it is free to get right.
The city also maintains parks with reservable pavilions and a gazebo at discounted rates for residents, ball fields, and sidewalks it describes as safe and well lit.
Trees
A city that runs a monthly brush chipping round is a city with a lot of trees, and in an old platted town those trees are usually mature and close to the street.
That matters below ground as much as above it. The line running out from the building belongs to the owner, no visual inspection reaches inside it, and in a town where 42% of the housing predates 1940 that pipe is often the oldest untouched component on the whole property. Roots find joints in old drain lines, and they give no warning at all until the day the drains back up.
We will not name a material from a build year. Nothing published establishes what Leslie lines 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 in there: roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages where they exist, and a clear run where they do not. On this housing stock it is the single most useful thing you can add to an inspection, because it turns the one genuine unknown on the property into a known.
Above ground, we look at how trees sit relative to the building: branches bearing on the roof or gutters, contact with siding, and limbs overhanging areas we could not safely inspect. We report what we see and say plainly where access or vegetation limited us.
A camera inspection is added to the same appointment rather than booked separately.
Permits
Leslie publishes its full Code of Ordinances online through Municode, which is more than many small cities manage, and there is a forms section on the city site.
What we could not establish from published sources is who issues building permits here and who carries out the inspections. There is no building department page. We are not going to guess at a county authority or a contracted inspector, because across the communities we cover we have seen at least half a dozen different arrangements and they behave very differently in practice.
So ask the city, and use the single point of contact to your advantage: who issues a permit for the work I have in mind, who inspects it, how much notice do they need, and where is the permit history for this address held.
Ask for that permit history specifically. On a city where four houses in ten predate 1940, eighty years of alterations have accumulated, and the gap between what was permitted and what is physically present is a gap the buyer inherits.
A home inspection is not a code inspection or a permit search, and we do not present it as one. What we do is establish what is physically there and in what condition, and flag work that looks as though it was done without the benefit of a permit — which on housing this old is a common finding and a fair thing to raise. A buyer’s inspection is the usual starting point, and commercial building inspections to the CCPIA standard are available where a building is commercial.
The housing
On the pre-1940 stock the inspection is an exercise in reading eighty or more years of accumulated change, and the findings are consistent enough that we know what to look for.
Electrical systems have usually been rebuilt in stages by different hands. We look for mixed wiring types meeting in the same box, ungrounded receptacles, undersized or overfilled panels, overfused circuits, and connections made in places that were never intended to be permanent. Original service capacity is frequently the practical limit on what a modern household wants to run.
Plumbing tends to have been renewed in part rather than in whole, so the material transitions where old meets new are where problems concentrate. Original galvanized supply, where it survives, corrodes from the inside and shows as reduced flow and discolored water long before anything leaks.
Roof coverings will be several generations deep. Heating equipment is typically several replacements from the original, and how well each was fitted and vented matters more than how new the current one looks.
Foundations of that era are usually stone or early block, and their condition depends far more on how water has been managed around the building than on how they were originally built. So we record where the downspouts terminate, where any sump pump discharges and whether there is a backup, and how the ground falls away from the building.
The 120 units from the 1970s are a different set of questions: aluminum branch wiring is a live issue in that era and we report it wherever we find it, and roof, heating and water heating equipment will be two or three replacements deep. Radon testing and mold inspection and testing can be added to any visit.
Getting answers
Because so much of Leslie’s administration sits with so few people, the efficient approach is to prepare a single list rather than making four separate calls.
Worth having on it: who issues and inspects building permits, and what the permit history for this address shows. Whether the property is on city water and sewer, and what the current rates are. Whether there is any open code enforcement matter on the address. And what the yard waste schedule actually is in the month you plan to move.
The city hall page lists who covers what, and notes that messages for anyone can be left on a single number. City hall is on West Bellevue with a separate post office box for mail.
What a home inspection contributes to that conversation is specifics. Rather than asking general questions, you go in knowing that this roof has a particular problem, that this panel has been modified, that this addition looks as though it was built without a permit. That turns a vague inquiry into a short, answerable one.
We deliver a full written report with photographs, generally the same day, so you can act on it while you still have room to negotiate. You can read what our clients say, browse answers to common questions, or get in touch about a specific address in Leslie.
Local information from City of Leslie — services, brush chipping and leaf collection rules · City of Leslie — City Hall, staff roles and contact · City of Leslie — Code of Ordinances on Municode · City of Leslie — forms. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Radon in Ingham 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 · Ingham County radon and inspection coverage
Zone from the EPA Map of Radon Zones.
Why choose us
Five reasons people here pick us as their Leslie 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
Broadly, one number reaches everyone. Leslie’s staff is seven people covering the whole city, most holding two or three roles — the city manager is also the public works director, and the police chief also handles code enforcement.
We could not establish it from published sources — there is no building department page and the city does not say who inspects. Ask the city directly before planning work, and we would rather tell you that than guess.
Leslie publishes its full Code of Ordinances online through Municode. We have not read it in detail and make no claim about what it says, but it is there to be searched.
The city crew chips brush in the first full week of each month, for material at the curb that Monday. Limbs must be under five inches in diameter, placed cut end toward the street, with no other yard waste mixed in.
No, and the city says so plainly — other city work takes priority. It also states that the service is not for brush left by a tree contractor a homeowner has hired, who should remove it themselves.
Curbside collection runs each spring and fall, usually April and October. Leaves go in a long narrow row at the very edge of the street and specifically not in bags, with no brush mixed in. Call the city to confirm timing.
Old. Around 348 of roughly 837 units predate 1940, about 42% of the city, with a second cluster of 120 built in the 1970s and very little from the 1980s.
On this housing stock, yes. The drain line under a pre-1940 house is often the oldest untouched component on the property, and a town with monthly brush chipping is a town with mature trees near the street. A camera inspection goes on the same visit.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
Police, fire, rescue, military and educators — our way of saying thank you for your service. Enter code HERO at checkout.
Claim the Hero DiscountNeed a Leslie home inspector and not sure we reach you? Call 734-331-3269 and we will tell you.
Permits, assessing and property records for Leslie are handled by Leslie, Michigan, not by us.
From the blog
October 22, 2017
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Your local Leslie home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
