Milan, Michigan
Looking for a Milan home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Milan, 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 Milan 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 Milan and across Monroe 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 Milan 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 reportMilan housing stock
Milan has roughly 2,670 housing units and about 64% of them are single-family detached. Age is the most useful single fact about a house before anyone has seen it. It narrows down what is worth checking first, and it is why two places of much the same size can need quite different inspections.
If the town has a defining decade it is the 2000s, which accounts for 623 homes, around 23% of the housing stock.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $219,900.
Treat this as a starting list, not a diagnosis. A Milan home inspector checks these things early in a home of this age and then records what is genuinely there, which is often not what the era would suggest.
Housing figures: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2022 five-year estimates.
When Milan was built
80% of homes here run on utility gas, and 9 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 25 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
If you are buying in Milan, there is one phone call worth making before anything else: the City will send someone to identify what your water service line is made of, and it says so on its own website.
That offer exists because of a state program a lot of buyers have run into and very few have had explained properly. Michigan requires municipalities to visually identify every service line that does not have a clear record of the installed material, and to write to every property whose line is unknown.
Which means the letter people receive says unknown, not lead. The City is direct about it: there is no need for concern about the safety of the water, and unknown means there is no record on file — not that anything has been found.
The City also says it is going faster than the state requires, identifying more lines per year than EGLE asks for, and that where a line is found to be lead or galvanized the water department contacts the owner, provides a filter and adds the property to the replacement list.
That matters here because of the age of the housing. Of roughly 2,670 units, 462 predate 1940 and another 510 were built in the 1950s — nearly 1,200 units built before 1960 — alongside a much newer group of 1,007 built between 1990 and 2009.
Before you buy
Water service lines
The City’s notice about water service lines is the clearest explanation of this program we have come across, and it is worth reading in full if you have received one of the letters or are buying a property that has.
The obligation comes from the state. Municipalities must visually identify every service line within their boundaries that does not have a clear record of the material it was made from, and must write to every residence and business whose line is unknown. The letters therefore go out on the basis of missing paperwork rather than on the basis of any finding, which is why so many arrive at houses where nothing is wrong.
Where a line does turn out to be lead or galvanized, the City says its water department contacts the owner, provides a lead filter and puts the property on the replacement list. It also states that it is identifying more lines per year than the state requires, and that its lead and copper testing has consistently fallen within state limits.
And it makes an offer most municipalities do not: call city hall, and someone from the water department will come and identify the service line material coming into your house.
That is worth doing before you close rather than after. We do not test water and we do not determine buried service line materials — that is the City’s process and a certified laboratory’s work. What a buyer’s inspection reports is the visible supply piping inside the building where it is accessible, the materials we can actually see, and any point where the material changes or a repair has been made. On a house built before 1960 that is genuinely informative, because interior plumbing on this stock has usually been replaced in stages and the joins tell you when.
The water system
Milan makes its own water rather than buying it. Its plant produces an average of 1.2 million gallons a day — just over 390 million gallons a year — drawn from four wells and treated for iron removal before it enters 27 miles of water main. Two towers hold 500,000 gallons each, and the system is operated and maintained under contract by licensed water operators, with meters read monthly.
Iron removal is there because the raw groundwater carries iron. That is ordinary for a well supply in this part of the state, and it is the sort of thing that shows itself in fixtures and appliances if it gets through.
On an inspection we run fixtures and report on functional flow and drainage — whether the supply keeps up when more than one thing is running, and how the drains behave under that load. Where staining or deposits suggest something about the water, we describe what we see rather than diagnosing water chemistry, and we note the presence and visible condition of any softener or filtration equipment without testing or certifying it.
Water testing itself goes through a certified laboratory, and questions about the supply go to the City, which publishes an annual water quality report.
Permits
The City’s building, zoning and planning department issues building, electrical, plumbing and mechanical permits itself, along with site plan review and zoning compliance. For anyone researching a property that is a real advantage: one records request should produce the roof, the addition, the deck, the furnace, the service upgrade and the re-pipe together.
The same department handles property maintenance complaints and noxious weed complaints, and the building and zoning official acts as liaison to three separate bodies — the planning commission, the zoning board of appeals and a distinct building and safety board of appeals.
That last one is worth knowing about. Where a building code decision is disputed, or where an alternative material or method is proposed, there is a dedicated route for it rather than a zoning board being asked to rule on construction questions.
On an older house those routes come up more often than people expect, because bringing an eighty-year-old building into line with a modern requirement sometimes needs a judgment rather than a rulebook.
A buyer’s inspection is not a code inspection and we do not issue citations. We report the condition and apparent function of the roof, structure, foundation, drainage, electrical, heating and cooling, plumbing and the accessible interior, and say plainly where work looks as though it happened outside the normal process.
Two clusters
Milan’s housing arrived in two waves with a quiet stretch between them: 1,186 units before 1960, then only 441 across the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s combined, then 1,007 between 1990 and 2009.
On a pre-1960 house the inspection reads accumulated alteration. Electrical extended in stages by different hands, with the coherence of the upgrades mattering far more than their date. Plumbing renewed in part rather than in whole, leaving material transitions worth examining — and, in a city running a service line identification program, worth looking at closely. Insulation and ventilation retrofitted into buildings designed without either. Heating equipment on its second or third generation, with venting that has not always kept pace. Roofs on their third or fourth covering. Foundations that have had six or eight decades of water to contend with.
On a house from the 1990s or 2000s the questions are about the first round of turnover: the original roof at or past its expected life, mechanical equipment being replaced for the first time, window seals and exterior finishes showing wear, grading settled since the build, and deck ledger connections and fasteners worth a proper look rather than a glance.
The scope of the inspection does not change between them. Where the hours go does, and being clear about that beforehand makes for a better report.
About 36% of the housing here is something other than a detached house. On a condominium the association documents decide where your responsibility ends, and for a small multi-unit building bought as an investment, a commercial inspection to the CCPIA standard is usually the right scope.
The buried line
The state program covers the water service line coming into the house. The sanitary line going out of it is the owner’s too, and nobody is running a program to identify that one.
On a house built before 1960 that pipe has been in the ground sixty-five years or more, and on one of the 462 prewar houses considerably longer, under a lot that has had the whole of that time to grow trees over it. We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what Milan 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 the only way to know, 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.
Alongside it we offer radon testing and mold inspection and testing, both of which can be added to a residential or commercial visit.
You can read what our clients say, look through answers to common questions, or get in touch about a specific address in Milan.
Local information from City of Milan — water service lines, the state identification program and free identification offer · City of Milan — Public Works, the water plant and distribution system · City of Milan — building, zoning and planning department and permits. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Radon in Monroe 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 · Monroe County radon and inspection coverage
Zone from the EPA Map of Radon Zones.
Why choose us
Five reasons people here pick us as their Milan 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
Mitch was great and thorough the our inspection. He provided explanations and suggestions throughout the service. Highly recommend!
Jaynie GMonroe, MII 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, MIWhat happens
Questions
The City’s own answer is no. Michigan requires municipalities to visually identify every service line without a clear record of its material, and to write to every property whose line is unknown. The letter reflects missing paperwork rather than a finding, and the City states there is no need for concern about the safety of the water.
Yes, and the City offers to do it. Its notice says that if you would like a member of the water department to identify the service line material coming into your house, you should call city hall and someone will contact you. On a purchase, that is worth doing before you close.
The City states that its water department contacts the owner, provides a lead filter, and adds the property to the list of service lines to be replaced. It also says it is identifying more lines per year than the state requires, and that its lead and copper testing has consistently fallen within state limits.
No to both. We report the visible supply piping inside the building where it is accessible, describe the materials we can actually see, and note where a material changes or a repair has been made. The service line determination is the City’s process, and water testing goes through a certified laboratory.
The City produces its own. Its plant averages 1.2 million gallons a day, drawn from four wells and treated for iron removal before entering 27 miles of water main, with two towers holding 500,000 gallons each. The system is operated and maintained under contract by licensed water operators, and the City publishes an annual water quality report.
Building, electrical, plumbing and mechanical, plus site plan review and zoning compliance. The department also handles property maintenance and noxious weed complaints, and the building and zoning official liaises with the planning commission, the zoning board of appeals and a separate building and safety board of appeals.
It comes in two waves. About 1,186 units were built before 1960 — 462 of them before 1940 — and another 1,007 between 1990 and 2009, with only 441 across the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s combined. Which wave a property belongs to shapes the whole inspection.
On this housing stock, yes. The state program covers the water line coming in; nobody is running one for the sanitary line going out, and that pipe is the owner’s too. On a pre-1960 house it has been in the ground sixty-five years or more under mature trees. A camera inspection documents its actual condition and is added to 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 Milan home inspector and not sure we reach you? Call 734-331-3269 and we will tell you.
Permits, assessing and property records for Milan are handled by the City of Milan, not by us.
From the blog
October 22, 2017
April 5, 2024
Your local Milan home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
