Milford, Michigan
Looking for a Milford home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Milford, 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 Milford 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 Milford 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 Milford 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 reportMilford housing stock
Milford has roughly 2,735 housing units and about 68% 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 1990s, which accounts for 589 homes, around 22% of the housing stock.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $322,500.
Treat this as a starting list, not a diagnosis. A Milford 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 Milford was built
94% of homes here run on utility gas. Another 57 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Milford has been supplying its own water since 1895, which is a longer continuous run than almost anywhere we work. The Village serves roughly 2,500 accounts today and reads most of them through smart meters that transmit usage back to the Village offices automatically.
An old water system and automatic meter reading together produce a specific situation: consumption is measured closely and continuously, so a leak shows up as a number rather than as a surprise. That is a good thing, but it does mean the meter notices things before anyone in the house does.
What makes Milford genuinely unusual is that it gives residents somewhere to take a dispute. A water board of appeals made up of three Village residents hears water and sewer disputes and can make billing adjustments — a right most communities simply do not offer.
But it comes with two hard limits. The board will not consider disputes about situations predating the hearing by more than twelve months, and it will not adjust billings beyond twelve months from the hearing date. And it meets only twice a year, in spring and fall.
So a billing problem here has a clock on it and a calendar against it. Finding a plumbing fault early is worth more in Milford than in most places, because the route to putting it right administratively is open for a limited time.
The housing reflects a real village rather than a subdivision: 490 units predate 1940, 589 date from the 1990s, and about a third of all units are not single-family detached.
Before you buy
Water billing
The Village’s water board of appeals is three Village residents with authority to hear water and sewer disputes and make adjustments to billing. That is worth knowing about simply because it exists; most places have no comparable route.
The limits are published as plainly as the power. The board considers current disputes only, and will make no adjustment where the dispute concerns a situation predating the hearing by twelve months. It will also make no adjustment extending beyond twelve months from the hearing date. And it meets as needed on a semiannual basis, in spring and fall.
Read those together and the practical position is clear. If something is wrong, the useful window is measured in months, and there may only be one or two opportunities to be heard inside it. A problem discovered in late spring, just after a sitting, has a long wait ahead of it while the twelve-month boundary keeps moving.
That is precisely why a thorough plumbing inspection is worth more here than the fee. A leaking toilet flapper, a weeping supply fitting or a failed shut-off valve is a small repair on the day it is found. Left running behind a smart meter that reports faithfully every day, it becomes a bill, and then an appeal, and then a deadline.
On an inspection we operate fixtures, look for weeping at accessible supply connections and valves, check under sinks and around the water heater, examine visible piping in basements and crawl spaces, and look for the staining, corrosion and mineral trails that show a leak has been running for a while. We report the meter where it is accessible.
We will be honest about the limits: we do not open walls or pressure-test the system, so a leak inside a wall cavity or a buried line may leave nothing visible on the day. What we can do is check everything accessible properly and tell you clearly what we find.
The sewer credit
The Village runs a watering credit program that lets residents claim a credit against sewer charges for excess summer water use, on the sensible principle that water sprayed on a lawn never reaches the treatment plant and should not be billed as though it had.
The form has to be submitted annually, by the first of September, in order to be processed in time for the billing due date. That is an easy deadline to miss in your first summer in a new house, and missing it costs you a year.
The Village also maintains around 200 separate irrigation accounts among its roughly 2,500 accounts overall, so on a property with substantial irrigation there may be more than one way to arrange things. Worth asking about at the treasurer’s office rather than discovering it a year later.
For residents facing genuine difficulty, the Village points to a hardship assistance program run by the county water resource commissioner’s office in partnership with United Way for Southeastern Michigan. Free automatic payment from a bank account is also available.
None of this is what a home inspection covers. We mention it because these are the local details that are genuinely easy to miss when you buy into a village from outside it, and because a dated annual form is exactly the kind of thing nobody tells you at a closing.
The housing
Milford splits into two roughly equal stories. There are 490 units predating 1940 and a further 370 from the 1950s, and then 589 units from the 1990s with 272 more from the 2000s. Roughly a third of all housing is attached or multi-unit rather than detached, which is what a genuine downtown produces.
On the pre-1940 stock, an inspection spends its time on the accumulated history of a long-lived building. Electrical rebuilt in stages by different hands across eighty years or more, where the gap between a real rewire and a newer panel in front of original distribution is the thing that matters. Plumbing renewed in part rather than in whole, leaving material transitions at the joins. Four or five generations of roof covering. Heating equipment several replacements from the original, sometimes vented through arrangements that have not kept pace with a newer appliance.
Foundations of that era are typically 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. On a village lot with limited space between buildings, that water management is usually the whole story.
The 1990s and 2000s houses are at a different stage entirely: original roof coverings reaching the end, water heaters on their second, and furnaces and condensers at the age where the next failure means replacement rather than repair. Decks from that period need ledger connections, flashing and fasteners genuinely examined rather than glanced at.
Where a property is one of the attached or multi-unit homes, the questions shift again — shared walls and roofs, what the association covers against what the owner does, and whether the building envelope has been maintained consistently across the whole structure rather than just at this unit.
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.
Permits
The Village’s building department is led by a full-time building official who is also the planning and zoning administrator, supported by part-time electrical and plumbing and heating inspectors. It covers site plan review, rezoning review, variance requests, lot splits, special use permits and zoning enforcement, including site plan compliance, signage, utility structures and decks. Its hours run through the week and to late morning on Fridays.
The Village publishes its zoning ordinance through an online system rather than as a flat document, which makes looking up what applies to a parcel more straightforward than usual.
Milford is notably well supplied with boards. Alongside the water board of appeals there is a construction board of appeals, a parcel division board, a zoning board of appeals, a tree board and a beautification commission. That is a village that takes its built environment seriously, and it is worth knowing which of them might have a view on something you are planning.
One genuine risk for a buyer here is jurisdictional. A township of the same name surrounds the Village and is a separate municipality with its own offices, its own ordinances and its own building department. An address with a Milford postal address is not necessarily inside the Village. Confirm which one you are buying into before you rely on anything on this page, because the rules genuinely differ.
A buyer’s inspection is not a permit search and does not assess zoning compliance. What it does is tell you what was actually done to a property, so the questions you take to the right office are specific ones.
The buried line
A village that has supplied water since 1895 has infrastructure of every age underneath it, and the same is true of the private lines running to individual houses.
We are not going to tell you what a service line at a particular address is made of. The Village publishes nothing on that in what we read, and material varies by the era in which a house was connected rather than the era in which it was built. It is a fair question to put to the Village directly, and on an older village house it is worth putting.
The sewer lateral is a separate matter and a clearer one: the line running from the building out to the main belongs to the owner, and no visual inspection reaches inside it. On one of the 490 houses predating 1940 that pipe may have been in the ground for the better part of a century, under a street with mature trees along it.
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. On the older village stock it is among the most useful things you can add, because a lateral is invisible, not covered by a standard inspection, and generally unknown to the seller.
It is worth doing on the 1990s houses too, for a different reason: a line laid during that build-out can carry construction debris or a settled section from the day it went in, and nothing about a thirty-year-old house suggests it.
A camera inspection is added to the same appointment rather than booked separately. You can read what our clients say, look through answers to common questions, or get in touch about a specific address in Milford.
Local information from Village of Milford — water board of appeals, its twelve-month limits and meeting schedule · Village of Milford — water and sewer billing, smart meters and the summer watering credit · Village of Milford — building and zoning department · Village of Milford — boards and commissions. 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. Zones are drawn around counties, not around addresses, which is why the only number that settles the question is the one from the house itself.
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 Milford 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
Yes. A water board of appeals made up of three Village residents hears water and sewer disputes and can make billing adjustments — a route most communities do not offer. But it meets only twice a year, in spring and fall.
Twelve months, in both directions. The board will not consider disputes about situations predating the hearing by more than twelve months, and will not adjust billings extending beyond twelve months from the hearing date. With only two sittings a year, act early.
Because a small plumbing fault found before closing is a small repair, while the same fault running behind a smart meter becomes a bill, then an appeal, then a deadline. We check accessible fixtures, supply connections, valves and visible piping, and report the meter where we can reach it.
A watering credit against sewer charges for excess summer water use, on the principle that water sprayed on a lawn never reaches the treatment plant. The form must be submitted annually by the first of September to be processed in time for the billing due date.
Confirm it before you rely on anything else. A township of the same name surrounds the Village and is a separate municipality with its own offices, ordinances and building department. A Milford postal address does not by itself mean a property is inside the Village.
Electrical rebuilt in stages across eighty years or more, plumbing renewed in part with material transitions at the joins, four or five roof coverings, and heating equipment several generations from the original. Foundations are typically stone or early block, and their condition tracks how water has been managed around the building.
No, and we will not guess. Service line material tracks the era a house was connected rather than the era it was built, and the Village publishes nothing on it in what we read. It is a fair question to put directly to the Village, and on an older village house it is worth putting.
On the older village stock, very much so — some of those laterals have been under a tree-lined street for close to a century. On the 1990s houses it is worth it for a different reason: construction debris or a settled section from the original build. A camera inspection is added to the same visit.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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Permits, assessing and property records for Milford are handled by the Village of Milford, not by us.
From the blog
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Your local Milford home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
