Northville, Michigan
Looking for a Northville home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Northville, 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 Northville 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 Northville and across Wayne 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 Northville 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 reportNorthville housing stock
Northville has roughly 2,814 housing units and about 68% 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: 752 homes, about 27% of everything standing today.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $431,500. 85% 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 Northville 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 Northville was built
91% of homes here run on utility gas, and 31 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 23 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Northville has a local historic district, and it is the only community we cover where the color you paint the outside of your house is subject to review. The Historic District Commission is charged with reviewing plans for construction, alteration, moving, exterior changes, exterior paint colors and demolition of all buildings within the district.
The City has taken this seriously for a long time. It surveyed its historic properties in 1972, adopted a historic preservation ordinance in 1974, carried out a second and more intensive survey in 2018, and adopted a new set of design guidelines in August 2024.
That matters to a buyer because of what the housing is. Of roughly 2,814 units, 752 — about 27% — predate 1940, the second highest prewar share of anywhere we cover. A great many of the houses you will look at here are exactly the buildings the ordinance exists to protect.
The single most useful thing to understand before you buy is the line the guidelines draw between repair and replacement. Repairing a rotted windowsill, a broken pane or a damaged section of wood siding in kind is ordinary maintenance and is not reviewed. Installing new windows, replacing a front door or adding a second story is reviewed.
So when an inspection reports that the windows are failing, the roof is near the end of its life or the porch is going, the question in this district is not only what it will take to put right — it is which route you are on, and how long that route takes.
Before you buy
The historic district
The City’s historic district design guidelines set out the distinction more clearly than most ordinances manage.
Work reviewed by the commission includes building a second story addition on a single story house, installing new windows and replacing a front door. Ordinary maintenance that is not reviewed includes repairing a rotted wood windowsill, repairing a broken windowpane and repairing a damaged or deteriorated section of wood siding in kind.
The phrase doing the work in both lists is in kind. Fixing what is there in the same material and the same form is maintenance. Swapping it for something different is a change, and changes get looked at.
There is also a faster route worth knowing about. The commission may delegate the issuance of a certificate of appropriateness for minor classes of work to the Building Official, and it decides what falls into that category and gives written guidelines for the review. What has been delegated is a question for the Building Department, and it is well worth asking before you assume a job needs a commission meeting.
The guidelines themselves run to sections on paint and paint colors, windows, storm windows, porches, balconies and patios, and roofing material, roof shape, roof features and gutters — which is very nearly a list of what a home inspection reports on. The City also links the federal preservation standards and information on historic preservation tax credits, which is the other side of the arrangement.
What it means for the report
Our job does not change inside a historic district. We report the condition and apparent function of the roof, structure, foundation, drainage, electrical, heating and cooling, plumbing and the accessible interior, exactly as we would anywhere else.
What changes is what you do next, and it is worth thinking about before you write an offer rather than after.
On a hundred-year-old house, original wood windows are the component most often reported as needing attention. Two streets outside the district, replacement units are a straightforward decision. Inside it, installing new windows is reviewed — while repairing sills and panes is not. In practice that pushes the sensible answer toward repair, restoration and storm windows, which is a different conversation with a different kind of contractor and a different timescale.
The same logic applies to roofing material, porch reconstruction, siding and doors. A like-for-like repair is the simplest path; a change of material or appearance is the one that needs approval.
None of this makes an old Northville house a difficult purchase. It makes it a purchase that rewards planning. Our report tells you what condition things are actually in; the commission’s guidelines tell you what your options are; and the two together are worth far more than either alone.
On a prewar house we pay particular attention to the things that decide whether repair is still viable: the condition of the sashes and frames rather than just the glazing, whether siding has rot behind paint, whether a porch is settling or simply weathered, and the state of the roof structure underneath the covering.
Permits
The City’s community development department takes permit applications and inspection requests online, with a separate inspection hotline, and asks that inspections be requested before 3:30 in the afternoon.
The department itself runs a four-day week, Monday through Thursday. On a project with a closing date attached that is a real constraint rather than a detail: a request that misses the Thursday cutoff waits until Monday, and where the historic district commission is involved there is a meeting cycle on top of that.
For anyone researching a property, ask for the permit file and, separately, for any certificates of appropriateness. On a house in the district those two records together tell you what has been changed and what was approved — and an exterior alteration with no certificate behind it is a loose end you would take on with the house.
A buyer’s inspection is not a permit search and does not assess compliance with design guidelines. It reports what is actually there, which is the necessary first step either way.
Two kinds of house
The housing here is not all Victorian. Alongside the 752 prewar units sit 527 built in the 1980s, 429 from the 1960s and 423 from the 1970s, and about 32% of the total is something other than a detached house.
On a prewar house the inspection is an exercise in reading accumulated alteration: electrical extended in stages by different hands, plumbing renewed in part, insulation and ventilation retrofitted into a building designed without them, heating added and replaced and sometimes vented into a chimney never intended for it, and a foundation that has had a century of water to contend with.
On an eighties house it is a much more familiar exercise: original roofs long gone, the second generation of mechanical equipment now in place, windows and exterior finishes at the age where deferred maintenance shows, and grading that has settled since the build.
On attached or multi-unit property the boundary question dominates. The association documents decide where your responsibility ends and the association’s begins, and roofs, siding, windows, decks and common drainage are where buyers most often assume wrongly. For a small multi-unit building bought as an investment, a commercial inspection to the CCPIA standard is usually the right scope, and the same applies to the commercial buildings in the district, which have their own set of design guidelines.
Radon testing and mold inspection and testing can be added to either kind of visit.
The buried line
The sanitary line from the building to the main belongs to the owner. On one of Northville’s prewar houses that pipe may have been in the ground for a hundred years, under a street with mature trees on both sides.
We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what Northville laterals are generally made of, and a guess in a report is worse than no statement at all.
What a camera settles is the thing nothing else reaches: roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages where they exist, and a clear run where they do not. On housing this old it is among the most useful things you can buy before closing, and it is not a question the historic district commission or anyone else will answer for you.
A sewer 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 Northville.
Local information from City of Northville — historic district design guidelines, adopted August 2024 · City of Northville — historic district and the preservation ordinance · City of Northville — inspections, online permits and building applications. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Radon in Wayne County
Zone 3 is the lowest of the three EPA categories — the predicted average indoor level across the county is below 2 pCi/L. So Northville is not where the state’s worst readings turn up, and we would rather say that plainly than imply otherwise. What a zone cannot tell you is anything about one house: 17% of tests actually run in Wayne County still came back at or above the EPA’s 4 pCi/L action level, which is about one in six. 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 · Wayne 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 Northville 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
Jim was prompt and thorough during the mold testing. Clearly gave us an explanation about mold and testing process he was going to conduct. Testing was followed by a written report. I would recommend everyone use a third party to test mold, independent from the company conducting remediation work. I would hire Trademark again and strongly recommend them.
Alberto PicconeNorthville, MIOra from Trademark did an incredible job with the inspection and sewer scope of the home I am in the process of buying. He was very thorough, explained everything to me from the start, and made it all super easy to understand which definitely helped to put me at ease a bit more. Highly recommend this company!
Mariah HartmanWestland, MICowboy “Jim” just did Mold Testing in my parents’ basement. He was Professional, explained the what, how and yet of everything to my Senior parents. Our results came back super quick. He even referred us to the resources on the Trademark website for me to use to fix the leaky basement. It’s 1 stop shopping with Trademark.
Becky JohnsonWayne, MIWhat happens
Questions
Within the historic district, yes. The City states that its Historic District Commission reviews plans for construction, alteration, moving, exterior changes, exterior paint colors and demolition of all buildings in the district. Whether a particular address falls inside the mapped district is worth confirming with the City before you rely on anything.
The City’s guidelines give examples of reviewed work: building a second story addition on a single story house, installing new windows, and replacing a front door. Ordinary maintenance that is not reviewed includes repairing a rotted windowsill, repairing a broken windowpane, and repairing a damaged section of wood siding in kind.
There can be. The commission may delegate issuing a certificate of appropriateness for minor classes of work to the Building Official, deciding what qualifies and providing written guidelines for that review. What has been delegated is a question for the Building Department, and worth asking before assuming a job needs a commission meeting.
Inside the district, repair and restoration sit on the maintenance side of the line and installing new windows is reviewed. In practice that pushes the sensible answer toward repairing sashes, sills and glazing and adding storm windows — a different conversation, with different contractors, on a different timescale. We report the condition of the sashes and frames, not just the glass, so you can judge which route is realistic.
The City links historic preservation tax credit information alongside the ordinance and the design guidelines, and the district’s stated purposes include stabilizing and improving property values. Whether any particular credit applies to a particular project is a question for the City and a tax adviser rather than for us.
Through an online portal or the inspection hotline, with requests needed before 3:30 in the afternoon. The community development department runs a four-day week, Monday to Thursday, so a request that misses the Thursday cutoff waits until Monday.
Two files rather than one: the permit history, and any certificates of appropriateness. On a house in the district those together tell you what has been changed and what was approved. An exterior alteration with no certificate behind it is a loose end that comes with the property.
On a prewar house, very much so. The lateral belongs to the owner, may have been in the ground a century, and the mature street trees the district is admired for have had the same time to find it. A camera inspection documents roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages where they exist, 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 Northville home inspector and not sure we reach you? Call 734-331-3269 and we will tell you.
Permits, assessing and property records for Northville are handled by Northville, Michigan, not by us.
From the blog
October 22, 2017
April 5, 2024
November 23, 2017
Your local Northville home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
