Northfield Township, Michigan
Looking for a Northfield Township home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Northfield Township, 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 Northfield Township 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 Northfield Township and across Washtenaw 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 Northfield Township 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 reportNorthfield Township housing stock
Northfield Township has roughly 3,864 housing units and about 74% 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 1,045 homes, around 27% of the housing stock.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $265,900. There are around 542 manufactured and mobile homes in Northfield Township. Those are a different inspection — the questions are about the frame, the anchoring and the skirting rather than a basement.
Treat this as a starting list, not a diagnosis. A Northfield Township 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 Northfield Township was built
77% of homes here run on utility gas, and 59 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 330 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Northfield Township publishes something most municipalities keep quiet about: the exact test that decides whether it will pay for the damage when a sewer backs up into your basement, and the deadline for asking.
Its wastewater page sets out four questions that must all be answered yes — was there a defect in the Township’s sewer line, did the Township know or should it reasonably have known, did it fail to correct the defect in a reasonable time, and did that failure cause both the event and the damage. It then states that a written claim must be filed within 45 days of discovering the event, that filing guarantees nothing unless liability is determined, and that reimbursement is capped at the actual cash value of what was damaged.
Read that carefully and it tells you the honest position anywhere in Michigan: a backup is usually the property owner’s problem, and the exceptions are narrow. Which makes the condition of the line that belongs to the house rather more interesting than most buyers expect.
The housing here is dominated by one decade. Of roughly 3,864 units, 1,045 date from the 1990s — more than a quarter of everything in the township — with 584 from the 1980s and 550 from the 2000s. Underneath that sits an older core of 432 units built before 1940. About 74% is single-family detached.
One more thing to settle early: the Township’s own offices carry a Whitmore Lake mailing address. Whitmore Lake is a postal name, not a government, so an address there does not by itself tell you which township’s rules apply to the property.
Before you buy
Sewer backups
The Township’s wastewater treatment plant page is worth reading in full before you buy a house with a finished basement here. It is unusually candid.
It says that because a sewer is not a closed system, many things cause backups and overflows — wipes, roots and grease being the common ones — and that while a municipality can make rules and educate people, there is no way to prevent backups absolutely.
If you do intend to claim, the Township tells you what the file has to contain: receipts for cleaning and plumbing, a list of damaged items with receipts proving how old they were, proof that you owned them, and photographs of every damaged item and area. It notes plainly that a claim without sufficient detail loses much of its value, and that actual cash value — what the items were worth at the time, not what new ones would cost — is the maximum payable.
Notice of claim forms are hand delivered by treatment plant staff, and the emergency instruction begins with something worth remembering in the moment: discontinue household water use, then call.
None of this is a reason not to buy here. It is a reason to know the condition of the line between the house and the main before you own it, because that stretch is yours and no claim process covers it.
Prevention
The most useful sentence on the Township’s page is an invitation. Call the treatment plant at the first sign of a problem, before the backup — if your drains are running slowly, for example, call, and staff will come and check the Township’s main line.
That is a free way to establish which end of the pipe the problem is at, and it is worth passing on to anyone moving here. Slow drains throughout a house point somewhere different from one slow fixture, and finding out before an excavation is quoted is worth the phone call.
The second is a prohibition, stated without qualification: never connect sump pumps, French drains or other flood control systems to the sanitary sewer. The Township calls it illegal, says the debris and silt will clog the line, and tells owners to have a plumber undo any illegal connection.
That one is directly inspectable, and it is a common finding in older houses where a sump was added long after the building. On an inspection we trace the sump discharge and the downspouts as far as they can be followed and report where they appear to go. Where a discharge disappears into a buried pipe we say so rather than guessing at its destination — but a sump line running toward a floor drain or a soil stack is visible, and we report it.
The Township is also an EPA Phase II stormwater community, and its program includes illicit discharge detection and elimination among the six control measures. Connections between systems that should be separate are something the Township actively looks for.
On grease, its advice is blunt and correct: dispose of fats and oils with the trash, and running them through a garbage disposal changes nothing, because grease in a drain still collects and hardens into a plug.
Permits
Unlike some communities in the region, Northfield Township runs the whole permit process itself. Its Building and Zoning Department handles building, mechanical, plumbing and electrical, which means a property’s permit history sits in one file rather than being split across two agencies.
The list of work needing a permit is broad: constructing or altering a structure, additions, demolition or moving a structure, a change of occupancy, decks, pools, sheds, residential and commercial roofing, driveways, finishing a basement, and all mechanical, plumbing and electrical work including temporary wiring. The Township adds that it is a serious offense to complete construction without a permit, and all contractors must register with the Township before obtaining any permit at all.
The scheduling detail is the part worth planning around. Building inspections happen Monday morning, Wednesday morning and all day Thursday. Electrical inspections happen Tuesday and Thursday. Mechanical and plumbing inspections happen Tuesday and Thursday in a four-hour window. At least 24 hours notice is required, exact appointment times are not scheduled and not guaranteed, and someone 18 or older has to be present on the day.
A reinspection fee is charged for any missed or disapproved inspection — and note that missed counts, not just failed. On a project with a tight closing date, that combination of narrow windows and no guaranteed times is the thing most likely to cost you a week.
For a buyer, the single-department arrangement is good news. One records request should produce the whole picture: the roof, the basement finish, the furnace, the service upgrade and the re-pipe, all in the same place. On a stock where 1,045 units date from the 1990s, the first generation of equipment is now at or past the age where it gets replaced, and whether that was done on a permit tells you something.
The housing
The age profile here produces two quite different inspections depending on which part of the township a property sits in.
On a 1990s house — and more than a quarter of the housing is 1990s — the building itself is usually sound and the findings cluster around service life. Roofs from the original build are long gone or overdue. Furnaces, water heaters and air conditioning from that era have generally been replaced once, sometimes badly. Windows, seals and exterior finishes are at the age where deferred maintenance starts to show. None of that is alarming; it is the ordinary arithmetic of a thirty-year-old house.
On one of the 432 units predating 1940 the questions change completely: the foundation and what sits under the floor, the route and protection of the plumbing, the wiring and how many times it has been extended, insulation and ventilation, and whether heating was added to a building never designed around it.
A buyer’s inspection covers the same ground either way — roof, structure, foundation, drainage, electrical, heating and cooling, plumbing and the accessible interior — but the report reads very differently, and it should.
On rural parcels the Township links the county environmental health division and publishes a guidebook for rural living, which is a fair signal that not every property here is on municipal services. We do not evaluate septic systems and we do not test water; those go to the county health department. What we can tell you is the condition of the building and the accessible plumbing inside it.
The line you own
Everything the Township publishes about backup claims concerns a defect in the Township’s line. The pipe from the building to that main is the owner’s, and no part of the claims process reaches it.
On a 1990s house that lateral has been in the ground thirty-odd years, usually under a lawn that has since grown mature trees. On one of the prewar houses it may have been down there for the better part of a century. We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what Northfield Township laterals are generally made of.
The Township names roots, wipes and grease as the common causes of backups. All three are visible on camera, and so is the thing a homeowner cannot otherwise detect — a belly, a displaced joint or a partial collapse that is not yet blocking, but will.
A sewer camera inspection records the actual condition of that line and is added to the same appointment rather than booked separately. Alongside it we offer radon testing, mold inspection and testing and commercial building inspections to the CCPIA standard for offices, retail, multifamily and warehouse property.
You can read what our clients say, look through answers to common questions, or get in touch about a specific property — including working out which township an address actually sits in, which around Whitmore Lake is a fair question to ask.
Local information from Northfield Township — wastewater treatment plant, backup claims and prevention · Northfield Township — Building and Zoning, permits and inspection schedule · Northfield Township — stormwater management and the Phase II MS4 program. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Radon in Washtenaw County
Zone 1 is the highest of the three EPA categories — the predicted average indoor level across the county is above the 4 pCi/L action level. What a zone cannot tell you is anything about one house: 38% of tests actually run in Washtenaw 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 · Washtenaw 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 Northfield Township 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
Mr. Cahoon was very thorough inspecting the home I am interested in purchasing. He explained everything clearly as he went along. Went above and beyond crawling into the very small crawl space! Thank you!
Amy CaragayYpsilanti, 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
Only in narrow circumstances, and the Township publishes them. Four questions must all be answered yes: was there a defect in the Township’s sewer line, did the Township know or should it reasonably have known, did it fail to correct the defect in a reasonable time, and did that failure cause both the event and the damage. Even then, filing guarantees nothing unless liability is determined.
The Township requires a written claim within 45 days of discovering the event. It also sets out what the claim has to contain: receipts for cleaning and plumbing, a list of damaged items with receipts proving their age, proof of ownership, and photographs. Reimbursement is capped at the actual cash value of the items rather than what new ones would cost.
Yes, and the Township specifically asks you to. Its page says to call the wastewater treatment plant at the first sign of a problem, before a backup happens, and staff will come and check the Township main. That is a free way to establish which end of the pipe the problem is at before any work is quoted.
No. The Township states that connecting sump pumps, French drains or other flood control systems to the sanitary sewer is illegal, that the debris and silt will clog the line, and that a plumber should undo any illegal connection. On an inspection we trace the sump and downspout discharges as far as they can be followed and report where they appear to go.
All of them. Northfield Township handles building, mechanical, plumbing and electrical permits in one department, so a property’s full permit history sits in a single file rather than being split between a city and a county. Contractors must register with the Township before obtaining any permit.
It needs planning. Building inspections run Monday morning, Wednesday morning and Thursday. Electrical runs Tuesday and Thursday, and mechanical and plumbing run Tuesday and Thursday in a four-hour window. At least 24 hours notice is required, exact times are not guaranteed, and someone 18 or older must be present. A reinspection fee applies to a missed appointment as well as a disapproved one.
No. Septic evaluations and water testing go through the county health department. The Township links that division and publishes a guidebook for rural living, which is a fair signal that not every property here is on municipal services. We inspect the building and the accessible plumbing inside it.
On this housing stock, usually yes. The Township names roots, wipes and grease as the common causes of backups, and all three show on camera — along with bellies and displaced joints that are not blocking yet. The line from the house to the main is yours, no claim process covers it, and 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 Northfield Township are handled by Northfield Township, Michigan, not by us.
From the blog
January 5, 2021
April 5, 2024
Your local Northfield Township home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
