Plymouth, Michigan
Looking for a Plymouth home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Plymouth, 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 Plymouth 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 Plymouth 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 Plymouth 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 reportPlymouth housing stock
Plymouth has roughly 4,393 housing units and about 60% 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 — 1,314 homes, roughly 30% of the town.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $413,100. Around 637 homes sit in two-to-four unit buildings, where a shared roof, a shared wall and sometimes a shared furnace mean the report has to be clear about where one unit stops.
This is not a forecast for any one address. It is where a Plymouth 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 Plymouth was built
90% of homes here run on utility gas. Another 44 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Plymouth requires a permit for basement waterproofing. We have not found another municipality in this project that does, and for a buyer it is the most useful thing on the City’s list.
Waterproofing work is normally invisible. Interior drain tile, a sump pit cut into a slab, an exterior excavation and membrane, a crack injection — once it is done and the floor is back down, nothing about it shows. And its existence tells you something important: somebody, at some point, had a basement problem serious enough to pay to fix.
Where that work needs a permit, there should be a record of it. On a city where 1,314 of about 4,393 homes were built before 1940 — 30% of the housing — that record is worth asking for by name.
The City also draws attention to something else worth settling first. Its own permits page states that Plymouth Township is a separate municipality, often confused with City addresses, and asks people to check the project address before applying. Two governments, one name, separate permit records.
One more shape in the numbers: the 1990s barely happened here. Only 49 units were built in that whole decade, against 806 in the 1960s and 395 in the 2000s. Around 60% is single-family detached.
Before you buy
The permit record
The City’s permits page lists what can be applied for online, and the list is a good map of what needs permitting at all: air conditioning replacement, basement waterproofing, concrete, electrical, EV chargers, fences, furnace replacement, mechanical, plumbing, reroofing, sewer and water, siding, water heaters, and windows and doors.
Read that against a house built in 1962 and it covers essentially everything a series of owners will have done to it. The roof, the siding, the windows, the furnace, the air conditioning, the water heater, the driveway, the fence — and, unusually, the basement.
Two entries are worth singling out. Basement waterproofing, for the reasons above. And EV chargers, which is a modern addition and a real electrical question: a charger is a large continuous load, and whether the existing service and panel can carry it, and whether the circuit was installed properly, is exactly the sort of thing that should have been inspected rather than assumed.
The expiry clocks are set out just as clearly, and they differ by category. Building permits — which cover additions, remodels, basement finishes, fences, driveways and signage — run one year. So do water and sewer permits. Mechanical, electrical and plumbing permits run six months. Right-of-way permits run 90 days. Outdoor dining permits expire on 1 November each year.
That matters when you are reading a permit history. A permit that was issued and then expired is not the same as a job that was finished and signed off, and on the six-month trades it does not take long for one to lapse. The City is also firm about process once a permit exists: permits posted and visible from the street, address numbers visible during the project, no work covered until inspections are complete, an owner or agent present to let inspectors in, and a reinspection fee where an inspection is called for work that is not ready.
A buyer’s inspection covers the roof, structure, foundation, drainage, electrical, heating and cooling, plumbing and the accessible interior, and reports the condition of what is there. The file tells you what was declared and when; the building tells you how it has held up.
The scratch test
The City publishes the clearest homeowner instructions on identifying a lead water service that we have found anywhere, and they take about a minute to follow.
The water and sewer page explains that the service line comes into the basement or crawl space on the wall closest to the street, that lead lines are typically a dull gray, and that you can confirm by gently scratching the pipe where it enters the house. If the scratch shows shiny silver, it is likely lead. If you suspect it is, the City asks you to contact Municipal Services directly.
That is precisely the observation an inspection makes as a matter of course. We report the visible supply piping where it is accessible, including at the point the service enters the building and along exposed runs, and we note where visible piping appears to be galvanized or lead rather than copper or plastic. What we do not do is test water — that is a separate discipline with its own certified laboratories — and a visual identification at the wall says nothing about what is buried between there and the main.
The City adds two useful things alongside it. The water meter is inside, on the same street-side wall, and it is owned and serviced by the City: repairs and replacement are at no cost to the owner, with notice given by door hanger. And the Department of Municipal Services may hold records of where water, storm and sanitary sewers run on a particular property — with the practical tip that a private water service line can be estimated by finding the curb stop and matching it to where the line enters the house.
For anyone worried about a leak rather than a material, the City offers a free real-time water consumption alert service. Setting thresholds on it is one of the cheapest ways to catch a running toilet or a failing valve before it appears on a bill.
Old housing
Plymouth has a substantial prewar core — 1,314 homes built before 1940 — and then an unusual gap. The 1990s produced only 49 units here, so the city is largely old housing plus mid-century plus a recent wave in the 2000s and 2010s.
On the prewar stock, the recurring theme is that everything modern was added later, by different people, at different times. Electrical services have usually been upgraded at the panel while some original branch wiring survives behind plaster, so what the panel suggests and what the circuits are can differ. Original supply plumbing has passed the end of any normal service life. Heating has often moved through two or three generations of technology in the same chimney, which is where venting arrangements get interesting. Foundations are frequently stone or unreinforced masonry, with the drainage arrangements of their day — which is exactly why basement waterproofing is a permitted activity here.
None of that makes an old house a bad house. It does mean the useful questions are about what has been done rather than what was originally built, and about whether the building has been maintained as a whole or patched a piece at a time. The junctions — where new work meets old, where an addition meets the original structure, where a finished basement covers what used to be visible — are where the findings sit.
The City has a Historic District Commission, so on some properties exterior appearance is governed by a separate consent on top of the building permit. If you are looking at something in the older part of the city and planning to change windows, doors, siding or roofing materials, establish whether that jurisdiction applies before you plan the work.
The City also adopted a Builders Code of Conduct in 2022, and its current codes are listed on the permits page. The code of ordinances carries the rest.
The buried line
Plymouth permits sewer and water work, including new connections, and the City may even hold records of where the lines run on a given property. What none of that tells you is the condition of the pipe between your building and the main.
On one of the 1,314 prewar houses here that lateral has been in the ground the best part of a century, under streets whose trees are the same age. On a 1960s house, sixty years. Either is long enough for roots to find a joint, for ground movement to displace a section, or for a repair to have been made that nobody now remembers. We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what Plymouth laterals are generally made of — and across a century of building here, more than one material is certainly down there.
It is worth pairing with the basement question. A city that permits waterproofing is a city that knows basements get wet, and a failing lateral is one of the ways water and worse ends up where it should not be. Resolving both before you buy is a single afternoon.
A sewer camera inspection records what is actually inside the line: roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages where they exist, and a clear run where they do not. It is added to the same visit rather than booked separately. Alongside it, commercial building inspections follow the CCPIA standard for offices, retail, multifamily and warehouse property, and radon testing or mold inspection and testing can be added to a residential or commercial visit. And if the address turns out to be in Plymouth Township rather than the City, that is a separate government with its own rules. Get in touch to talk through a particular property.
Local information from City of Plymouth — permits, expiry periods and inspection scheduling · City of Plymouth — water and sewer, lead service line identification · City of Plymouth — code of ordinances and city charter. 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. That puts Plymouth at the calmer end of Michigan’s radon picture, which is worth saying out loud rather than glossing over. 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. The zone describes a county. The only result that describes your basement is the one measured in it.
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 Plymouth 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
Ora 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, MIJim 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, 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
Yes — the City lists basement waterproofing among the permits that can be applied for online, which we have not found in any other municipality in this project. For a buyer that is doubly useful: there should be a record of the work, and the existence of that record tells you the basement once had a problem serious enough to pay to fix.
The City publishes the method. The line comes into the basement or crawl space on the wall closest to the street. Lead is typically a dull gray, and if you gently scratch the pipe where it enters the house and the scratch shows shiny silver, it is likely lead. If you suspect it is, contact Municipal Services directly. We report the visible supply piping as part of an inspection, but we do not test water — that is a separate discipline.
Worth checking, and the City says so itself: Plymouth Township is a separate municipality, often confused with City addresses, and the City asks people to check the project address before applying for permits. They are separate governments with separate ordinances, inspectors and permit records.
It depends on the category, and the City sets them out clearly. Building permits — covering additions, remodels, basement finishes, fences, driveways and signage — run one year, as do water and sewer permits. Mechanical, electrical and plumbing permits run six months. Right-of-way permits run 90 days. When reading a permit history, remember that an expired permit is not the same as a finished, signed-off job.
Air conditioning replacement, concrete, EV chargers, fences, furnace replacement, reroofing, siding, water heaters, and windows and doors — all of which can be applied for online. EV chargers are worth flagging: a charger is a large continuous load, and whether the existing service and panel can carry it is exactly what should have been inspected rather than assumed.
The City. The meter sits inside the house, on the wall closest to the street, and the City states it is owned and serviced by the City — with repairs or replacement provided at no cost to the owner and notice given by door hanger. The City also offers a free real-time water consumption alert service, which is a cheap way to catch a running toilet or a failing valve.
Old at one end, with an unusual gap in the middle. Of about 4,393 housing units, 1,314 predate 1940 — 30% of the city — with 806 from the 1960s and 574 from the 1950s. Only 49 units were built in the entire 1990s, while the 2000s and 2010s added 653. Around 60% is single-family detached.
Yes. On a prewar house the lateral has been in the ground close to a century, under streets whose trees are the same age; on a 1960s house, sixty years. It is also the one thing none of the City’s permits covers. We will not guess a material from a build year. Putting a camera down the line documents roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages where they exist, and is added to the same appointment.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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Permits, assessing and property records for Plymouth are handled by the City of Plymouth, not by us.
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