Parma, Michigan
Looking for a Parma home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Parma, 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 Parma 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 Parma and across Jackson 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 Parma 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 reportParma housing stock
Parma has roughly 258 housing units and about 81% of them are single-family detached. The year a house went up decides more about what an inspection turns up than almost anything else about it, which is why it is where we start rather than where we finish.
More of it dates from the years before 1940 than from any other decade — 93 homes, roughly 36% of the town.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $114,100.
This is not a forecast for any one address. It is where a Parma home inspector starts in a home of this age — and whatever we actually find, it goes in the report with photographs.
Housing figures: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2022 five-year estimates.
When Parma was built
89% of homes here run on utility gas. Another 6 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Two things shape a purchase here, and neither is obvious from the listing. The first is that the village sits across two townships — Parma Township and Sandstone Township — so a Parma address does not by itself tell you which township a parcel is in. Confirm it before you rely on anything you have been told about the township side of a tax bill.
The second is the permitting arrangement, and it is genuinely unusual. The village publishes its permit process plainly: a Zoning Compliance Permit is the first step for most projects, with interior renovations inside an existing structure the stated exception — though the village notes those may still need permits depending on the scope of the work.
What makes it different is who does the chasing. The village states that the property owner, or their designated representative, is responsible for scheduling inspections with the appropriate inspector. And there is not one inspector to call but three: separate people for building and zoning, for electrical, and for plumbing and mechanical, each with their own direct number.
That matters to a buyer more than it looks. Where a municipality books its own trades, an unfinished permit tends to surface. Where the owner makes the calls, a project that was built, occupied and forgotten can sit unfinaled for years — because the only person who was ever going to book the final inspection was the person who stopped thinking about it.
A home inspection is not a permit search and we do not present it as one. What we do is establish what is physically there and what condition it is in, and flag work that looks as though it was done without the benefit of a permit. On a village this size that is a question the office can answer for a specific address in one phone call.
Before you buy
Permits
The fee structure is published and it is refreshingly simple. A one-time $20 administrative and processing fee is charged when permits are issued, and the village is explicit that this flat fee covers the process regardless of how many permits your project needs. Where follow-up inspections are required, the fee is $80 per inspection.
Permits are required for more than people expect. The village lists new construction or placement of primary or accessory structures, alterations to them, installation of fences, and installation or modification of driveways. A fence and a driveway are exactly the kind of work a previous owner does over a weekend without asking anybody.
The village also states what happens when that goes wrong: projects started or completed without a required permit may result in additional fees, fines, or a Stop Work Order. For a buyer, the risk is not the fine. It is inheriting a structure the village does not consider compliant, and finding out after closing.
So the question to ask the office is narrower than "were there permits". Ask whether any permit on the address is still open, and whether a final inspection was ever conducted and approved. In a village where the owner schedules the inspections, those are two different questions with two different answers.
What a buyer’s inspection gives you is the physical picture to take to that conversation: what was built, how it was built, and whether it looks like work somebody meant to have inspected.
Water
Most Michigan communities are somewhere in the middle of replacing lead service lines. Parma is in the unusual position of saying it never had them. The village states on its services page that its municipal water system meets or exceeds the state requirement for water safety and has never used lead water lines, and that it also supplies the network of fire hydrants through the village.
That is a meaningful thing for a village to put in writing, and it is worth understanding exactly what it covers. It is a statement about the public system — the mains and the service lines the village owns. It is not a statement about the plumbing on the house side of the meter, which belongs to the owner and which no municipality can speak for.
That distinction matters here because of the age of the housing. The median Parma home was built in 1951, so a great many properties in the village were plumbed well before lead solder was banned from potable water lines in 1986. Supply pipe, solder at the joints and older fixtures are all part of the same question, and all of them sit inside the house.
We report what we can see: the visible supply piping and its material where it is exposed, transitions between materials at the joins, the condition of the shut-offs, how the system behaves under load, and the visible condition of the water heater. We do not test drinking water as part of a home inspection, and if that is a question you want answered for a specific address, the village office is the place to start.
The sewer side is simpler to state. The village says its central sewer system serves all residences and businesses within the village, so inside the village limits a private septic system is not the arrangement you should be expecting to find.
Drainage
On its front page the village makes a statement most municipalities leave buried in an ordinance. Water from basements and house gutters, it says, should never be diverted to the sanitary sewer — that doing so is illegal in the State of Michigan, and that it puts stress on and damages the sanitary sewer system. Alongside it the village links the state environmental department’s own guidance document on sump pump discharge.
We have not read that guidance and are not going to characterize what is in it. The point for a buyer is the plain one the village is making: this is not a local preference, it is the law, and a previous owner’s tidy solution to a wet basement may be exactly the thing that breaks it.
It is a common enough arrangement in older housing. A sump discharge or a downspout plumbed into a floor drain or a basement standpipe is quick, invisible from outside, and it sends storm water into a pipe built for sewage. In a heavy storm every property connected that way is contributing to the same surcharge.
So we look. We report where the downspouts actually terminate, where any sump pump discharges to and whether that discharge is carried away from the building or simply returned to the ground beside it, whether there is a backup arrangement, and how the ground falls away from the foundation. Where a discharge appears to enter the sanitary system we say so plainly, because it is the owner’s to correct and it is better known before closing than after.
None of that is a code determination and we do not present it as one. It is a description of what is physically connected to what, which is the thing a buyer can actually act on.
The housing
Parma has roughly 258 housing units and about 81% of them are single-family detached, with a median build year of 1951. That puts the middle of this housing stock about seventy-five years old, which is a specific and fairly predictable set of questions.
On houses of that period the electrical system is usually the accumulated work of several decades rather than one installation. Mixed wiring types meeting in the same box, ungrounded receptacles, a panel that has been added to more than once, and original service capacity that was sized for a 1951 household rather than a modern one. We report what we find and photograph it either way.
Plumbing tends to have been renewed in part rather than in whole, so the material transitions at the joins are where trouble concentrates. Heating equipment will be several replacements deep. Roof coverings will be on their second or third generation, and what matters is less the age than what was done at the flashings and penetrations each time.
Foundations of that era are typically block, and their condition depends far more on how water has been managed around the building than on how they were built — which is why the drainage questions above are not a separate subject from the structural ones.
At 81% detached there is a meaningful minority of other housing here too, and a building with more than one unit is a different inspection with different questions. 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.
The buried line
The village says its central sewer serves every property inside the village. What that does not tell you is the condition of the lateral running from the building out to the main, because that pipe belongs to the property and no visual inspection reaches inside it.
On a median 1951 house that lateral is around seventy-five years old unless somebody has replaced it, and nothing published by the village establishes what lines here are generally made of. We are not going to name a material from a build year. 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. On a street with mature trees, roots at an old joint are the single most common finding, and the first symptom a new owner usually gets is a backup.
It goes on the same appointment rather than a second visit, and we deliver a full written report with photographs, generally the same day. You can read what our clients say, browse answers to common questions, or get in touch about a specific address in Parma.
Village rules
A few published village rules are worth knowing before you buy, because they are about the property rather than the paperwork.
The winter parking ordinance runs from 1 November to 30 April and prohibits street parking between 2:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. so the plows can get through. For six months of the year, then, every vehicle has to be off the street overnight — which makes the driveway, and whether the garage is genuinely usable, a practical question rather than a cosmetic one. We report the condition and dimensions of what is there.
Yard waste has its own arrangements. Only the village’s own biodegradable leaf bags are collected, sold at the office and capped at 20 pounds a bag, and grass and leaves may not be blown or raked into the street. Brush is chipped, with branches limited to 6 feet in length and 6 inches in diameter, cut ends to the road, and no roots or building materials. Burning is prohibited apart from recreational campfires under a seasonal permit from the Parma/Sandstone Fire Department.
And one that surprises people moving from communities where they are common: golf carts are not permitted on village streets. The village explains the decision on its own page — the board decided in 2022 not to allow them, on the basis that Parma has no local officer of its own and relies on coverage from the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department, which indicated it could not take on that role.
None of this is what a home inspection covers. We raise it because it is free to learn now and irritating to learn in November, and because a buyer arriving from a larger community will not think to ask.
Local information from Village of Parma — required permits, fees and inspectors · Village of Parma — village services, water and sewer · Village of Parma — sanitary and storm sewers, and village news · Village of Parma — golf carts on village streets. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Why choose us
Five reasons people here pick us as their Parma 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
Justin Frey was my Inspector. He was very nice, very professional, and made sure I had all my questions answered. If I had a business, I definitely would hire him!
Tonya HConcord, 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 village does, and a Zoning Compliance Permit is typically the first step for most projects — the stated exception being interior renovations within an existing structure, which may still need their own permits depending on the scope of work.
You do. The village states the property owner or their designated representative is responsible for scheduling inspections with the appropriate inspector, and there are three separate inspectors: building and zoning, electrical, and plumbing and mechanical.
The village publishes a one-time $20 administrative and processing fee charged when permits are issued, flat regardless of how many permits a project needs, and $80 per inspection where follow-up inspections are required.
No. The village spans Parma Township and Sandstone Township, so confirm which one a specific parcel sits in before relying on anything about township-level taxes or services.
The village states its municipal system has never used lead water lines. That is a statement about the public system rather than the plumbing inside any individual house — and with a median build year of 1951, much of the housing here was plumbed before lead solder was banned in 1986. Take questions about a specific address to the village.
The village states its central sewer system serves all residences and businesses within the village, so inside the village limits a private septic system is not what you should expect to find.
The village states plainly that water from basements and house gutters should never be diverted to the sanitary sewer, that it is illegal in Michigan, and that it damages the system. We report where downspouts and any sump discharge actually terminate.
No. The village board decided in 2022 not to allow golf carts on village streets, and publishes its reasoning: the village has no local officer of its own and relies on coverage from the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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From the blog
October 22, 2017
May 18, 2024
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