Onondaga, Michigan
Looking for an Onondaga home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Onondaga, 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 Onondaga 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 Onondaga 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 an Onondaga 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 reportOnondaga housing stock
Onondaga has roughly 1,131 housing units and about 79% 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 384 homes, around 34% of the housing stock.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $226,800. 87% are owner-occupied, which is high even for this area. There are around 227 manufactured and mobile homes in Onondaga. 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. An Onondaga 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 Onondaga was built
11% of homes here run on utility gas, and 145 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 531 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Onondaga Township publishes something we wish every community published: a plain warning that the buried lines on your own property will not be marked for you, by anyone, for free. We come back to that below, because it is the most useful thing on this page.
The Township is also easier to deal with than most. Its counter opens Tuesday and Thursday evenings, from half past four until seven. Nearly every township we cover opens weekday mornings only, which is no use at all to somebody with a job, so evening hours are worth saying out loud.
Permits here run through three separate trade inspectors — one for electrical, one for mechanical, one for plumbing — each an individual working with the Township rather than a department or a county authority. So the first question about any work is which of the three you actually need.
The housing is modern by the standards of this area. Around 622 of roughly 1,131 units were built between 1990 and 2009, with the 1990s the largest single decade at 384. Only about 99 units predate 1940. This is not an old village core; it is rural land built out fairly recently, and the inspection questions follow from that.
And it is pole barn country. The Township publishes its own pole barn specifications, footing and carrier sizes and a drawing sheet as standard downloads, which tells you how normal outbuildings are here.
Before you buy
What is under your yard
The Township’s MISS DIG 811 page explains the free utility locating service, which is required by law in Michigan before you dig, and then makes three admissions that most homeowners never hear.
The first: not everything gets marked when you call, because private facility lines are not marked. The second: those unmarked private lines are the ones running from the house to anything else on the property with a service to it — a garage, a workshop, a lamp post — and if you want them located, you have to hire a private locator yourself.
The third is the one that matters most to a buyer, and we will quote the sense of it directly: water and sewer lines are often marked only in the right-of-way, not all the way to the meter on the house.
Read that again, because it is the whole argument. The free service stops at the boundary of public responsibility. The pipe between there and your house is yours — nobody will come and find it for you, nobody maintains it, and nobody will tell you what condition it is in.
The Township also notes that over a quarter of all damage to buried lines is caused by homeowners, and that even hand digging can do it. It publishes the flag color key too — red for electric, yellow for gas, orange for phone and cable, blue for water, green for sewer, white for the proposed excavation area — and asks that flags be left in place until the work is finished or for twenty-one days.
If you are buying a property here and planning a fence, a deck, a garden, a pool or an addition, that page is a five-minute read that could save you a very bad afternoon.
The buried line
Everything above is the reason a sewer camera inspection exists. The line running out from the building belongs to the owner, no free service will locate it, and no visual inspection reaches inside it.
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. It is the only part of a house purchase where you can turn an unknown into a known for a fixed, modest amount of effort on the day.
On this housing stock there is a particular reason to look. A line laid during a 1990s or 2000s build is now twenty-five to thirty-five years old — young enough that everyone assumes it is fine, old enough that it often is not. Lines of that age can also carry construction debris or a settled section from the day they went in, and nothing about the house above will tell you.
If the property drains to a septic system, the camera earns its place a different way. It documents the building drain out to the tank, which is the owner’s pipe and the part a septic evaluation does not examine. A septic evaluation looks at the tank and the field; the run between the house and the tank is nobody’s job by default, and on a lot with mature trees it is exactly where roots go.
A camera inspection is added to the same appointment rather than booked separately.
Permits
The Township’s inspector listing names three separate people: an electrical inspector, a mechanical inspector and a plumbing inspector, each working with the Township individually and reachable through the clerk. There is no single building department desk that handles everything.
That is worth planning around. It means a question about a furnace and a question about a panel go to different people, and it means lead times depend on individual schedules rather than on office opening hours.
Speaking of which, the permits page sets out how to file: by fax, by mail to the Township’s post office box, into a secured drop box, or by hand at the hall on Tuesday and Thursday evenings between half past four and seven. Payments are not taken by card or by phone.
The Township publishes a genuinely useful set of building documents, including a building permit and plan examination form, requirements for mobile homes, and a three-part pole barn packet covering specifications, footing and carrier sizes, and a drawing sheet. Electrical, mechanical and plumbing permit applications are each published separately.
Ask for the permit history on the specific address before you buy, and ask particularly about outbuildings. In a township that publishes standard pole barn footings, a barn without a permit behind it is a question worth resolving early. A home inspection is not a permit search, but it will tell you what is physically there to ask about — and commercial building inspections to the CCPIA standard are available where a building is commercial.
The housing
With about 384 units from the 1990s and 238 from the 2000s, the typical house here is twenty to thirty-five years old. That is a specific and fairly predictable stage in a building’s life, and it is when the first full round of replacements arrives more or less at once.
Original roof coverings reach the end of their service life. Water heaters are on their second or third. Furnaces and air conditioning condensers reach the point where the next failure means replacement rather than repair. None of that is a defect — it is a schedule — but it is a schedule worth knowing before you agree a price.
Windows and exterior doors from that era are usually the original units, and their seals and hardware are where wear shows first. Failed seals in double glazing appear as clouding or deposits between the panes, and we note them individually rather than as a blanket comment.
Decks built alongside those houses need their ledger connections, flashing, fasteners and post bases genuinely examined rather than glanced at. Deck failures are among the few structural failures that injure people, and they almost always start at the ledger.
The 99 or so units predating 1940 are a different exercise entirely: electrical rebuilt in stages by different hands, plumbing renewed in part rather than in whole with material transitions at the joins, several generations of roof covering, and foundations of stone or early block whose condition depends far more on water management than on original construction.
And the outbuildings. At 79% detached on rural land, with the Township publishing its own pole barn standards, barns and workshops are a normal part of a property here. They frequently carry their own electrical supply, their own roof and structural questions, and they are very often where informal work has accumulated. We inspect them as part of the property, not as an afterthought.
Water and waste
The Township publishes no water department and no sewer department. There is no guidance about wells, and none about septic systems.
On rural land that is 79% detached houses, it would be easy to assume most properties are on a private well and a septic system, and easy to be wrong about a specific address. So we will not assert it. Get the answer in writing for the parcel you are buying.
Take well and septic questions to the county health department. A septic evaluation is specialist work carried out by or through them, and it answers questions no visual inspection can — whether a drainfield is failing, and the true condition of the tank. On rural property it needs arranging early, because it runs to its own timetable. A water test on a private well belongs in the same conversation.
What we inspect is the building and everything from the house side of the system inward: the accessible supply and drain lines, the vent arrangements we can see, how fixtures behave when the system is loaded, and the visible condition of any pump, pressure tank and treatment equipment.
Surface water matters more on a septic property than most buyers expect. A drainfield working in ground that is also taking every downspout and a sump discharge is being asked to do two jobs at once. So we record where the downspouts terminate, where any sump discharges, whether there is a backup arrangement, and how the ground falls away from the building. On a house from the 1990s or 2000s, grading that was correct at handover has had two or three decades of landscaping and settlement since.
Radon testing and mold inspection and testing can be added to any visit, and a buyer’s inspection is the usual starting point. You can read what our clients say, browse answers to common questions, or get in touch about a specific address in Onondaga Township.
Local information from Onondaga Township — MISS DIG 811, and what does not get marked · Onondaga Township — permits, filing hours and pole barn documents · Onondaga Township — township trade inspectors · Onondaga Township — planning and zoning documents. 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 Onondaga 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
Not the private ones. The Township states that private facility lines are not marked, and that water and sewer are often marked only in the right-of-way rather than all the way to the meter on the house. A private locator can be hired for the rest.
The Township’s example is any run from the house to another building or object with a service to it — a garage, a workshop, a lamp post. Those are the owner’s, and they are not part of the free locate.
Tuesday and Thursday evenings, from half past four until seven. That is unusually convenient for a township. Documents can also be faxed, posted to the PO box or left in the secured drop box.
It depends which trade. The Township works with three separate inspectors — electrical, mechanical and plumbing — each reachable through the clerk, rather than one combined department.
Ask the Township, but take it seriously: it publishes its own pole barn specifications, footing and carrier sizes and a drawing sheet as standard documents, which tells you they are a normal and regulated part of building here.
Yes. A line laid in a 1990s or 2000s build is now twenty-five to thirty-five years old, old enough for roots and settlement, and it can also carry construction debris from the day it went in. Nothing about the house above it will tell you.
We will not assume. The Township publishes no water or sewer department at all, and while private systems are likely on rural land, that is no substitute for confirming it for the specific parcel with the county health department.
Yes, as part of the property. They commonly have their own electrical supply and their own roof and structural questions, and they are frequently where informal work has built up over the years.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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Permits, assessing and property records for Onondaga are handled by Onondaga Township, not by us.
From the blog
October 22, 2017
Your local Onondaga home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
