Oxford, Michigan
Looking for an Oxford home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Oxford, 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 Oxford 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 Oxford and across Oakland 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 Oxford 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 reportOxford housing stock
Oxford has roughly 1,552 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 1970s: 355 homes, about 23% of everything standing today.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $322,400.
None of this says anything about the specific house you are buying. It is the shortlist an Oxford 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 Oxford was built
87% of homes here run on utility gas, and 20 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 11 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
The Village of Oxford publishes a short water lines FAQ, and the question at the heart of it is one you will not see anywhere else: how do I know if my home has the gooseneck?
A gooseneck is the short connector between the water main in the street and the service line running to a house. Historically many were made of lead because the material bends easily, and under Michigan’s revised lead rules they are being replaced. The Village publishes a map showing which areas have been updated and which remain to be updated, and its own FAQ opens by confirming the water is safe to drink.
That is a more precise question than most communities are asking, and it is worth raising with the Village on any address you are considering. It is also, firmly, not something a home inspection can answer — the connector is buried in the street.
The Village produces and treats its own water at its own plant, and publishes water quality reports going back to 2018.
The housing splits sharply. Of roughly 1,552 units, 324 predate 1940 and 355 date from the 1970s, while the whole of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s together account for only about 156 units. Around 68% is single-family detached.
Before you buy
Water
The Village’s water lines page answers three questions: whether the water is safe to drink, how to find out whether a home has the gooseneck, and where to get more information about the state’s lead rules. The answer to the first is yes, and the answer to the second is a map organized by area.
Being area-based rather than address-based, that map tells you where the work has reached rather than what is under any particular house. For a specific property the Village offices are the right place to ask, and the question costs nothing.
We do not test water and we do not determine what any buried pipe is made of — not the gooseneck at the main, and not the service line running from it. Water testing goes through a certified laboratory.
What a buyer’s inspection does report is the visible supply piping inside the building where it is accessible, the materials we can actually see, and every point where the material changes or a repair has been made. On a house from the 1970s, and even more so on one of the 324 that predate 1940, that is genuinely informative: interior plumbing on this stock has usually been replaced in stages, and the joins tell you when the work happened.
The Village produces and treats its own water rather than buying it, and publishes its annual water quality reports going back nearly a decade. That archive is the right first stop for anyone with questions about the supply itself.
Permits
Every municipal inspection in Oxford happens on a Tuesday or a Thursday. Building inspections run in the morning; electrical, mechanical and plumbing inspections run in a window in the middle of the day. The building department itself keeps a four-day week.
On a project with a closing date attached, that is the constraint to build the plan around rather than discover. A rough inspection missed on a Thursday waits until the following Tuesday, and a sequence of four trade inspections can eat several weeks on that rhythm alone.
The Village offers something in the other direction that is genuinely useful and rarely advertised: a pre-application meeting at the concept stage of a project, arranged by emailing the village manager with the property address and any sketch drawings. Village representatives are brought in as appropriate, and a fee applies where the village planner is asked or required to attend.
If an inspection turns up something that will need real work — a structural alteration, an addition, a change of use — that meeting is the cheapest hour you will spend on it, and it happens before anyone has paid for drawings.
New businesses have their own requirement: a zoning compliance application before moving in, which the Village explains serves both zoning permission and use, and as information for the police and fire departments. Anyone buying commercial or mixed-use property in the village should factor that in.
Building inspection is contracted out, and there is a separate code enforcement officer. A buyer’s inspection is not a code inspection and we do not issue citations — we report the condition and apparent function of what is there, and say plainly where work looks as though it happened outside the normal process.
Prewar houses
The 324 units predating 1940 are the oldest layer here, and on one of those the inspection is largely an exercise in reading accumulated alteration.
Electrical extended in stages by different hands, with mixed generations of wiring meeting in the same box, and a service upgrade whose depth matters far more than its date. Plumbing renewed in part rather than in whole, leaving material transitions worth examining closely — which in a village dealing with lead goosenecks is a section of the report worth reading twice. Insulation and ventilation retrofitted into a building designed without either. Heating added, replaced, and sometimes vented into a chimney never intended for it.
Roofs on housing that age are on their fourth or fifth covering. Foundations and basements have had eighty-five years or more of freeze, thaw and water, and the record of that is usually readable: staining, efflorescence, previous patching, replaced flooring and how the space is used.
On the 355 houses from the 1970s the pattern shifts to second and third generation equipment — furnaces, water heaters and air conditioning replaced once or twice, windows replaced once, and insulation that usually leaves a worthwhile improvement available in the attic.
With about 32% of the housing something other than a detached house, attached and multi-unit property comes up regularly. On a condominium the association documents decide where your responsibility ends, and for a small multi-unit building bought as an investment, a commercial inspection to the CCPIA standard is usually the right scope.
Drainage
Oxford sits in the Clinton River watershed, and the Village links the watershed council alongside its own stormwater material. What leaves a property is a shared concern here as much as a private one.
The household version of that question is about connections and grading. Where does the sump discharge? Where do the downspouts end? Does the drive pitch water toward the building or away from it? On a prewar house those arrangements were almost always added long after construction, by people solving one problem at a time.
On an inspection we trace sump and downspout discharges 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, because a confident guess in a report is worse than an honest uncertainty.
We also report the fall of the ground around the building, the condition of gutters and their terminations, and what the foundation and basement show about water that has been there before. On an eighty-five year old house those are almost always where the practical improvement is, and they are usually cheaper to address than anything inside.
Mold inspection and testing can be added where there is visible growth or a history of moisture, and radon testing can be added to any visit.
The buried line
The water gooseneck and service line are the Village’s program and nobody can inspect them from a basement. The sanitary line running out of the building is a different case entirely: it belongs to the owner, and it can be looked inside.
On a prewar Oxford house that pipe may have been in the ground the better part of a century, under a village lot with mature planting over it. On a 1970s house it is fifty years old. We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what Oxford laterals are generally made of, and 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. It is added to the same appointment rather than booked separately, and on this housing stock it is among the most useful things you can buy before closing.
It is also the honest counterweight to a page that has spent time on things nobody can see. Most of what is buried stays a question mark. This part does not have to.
You can read what our clients say, look through answers to common questions, or get in touch about a specific address in Oxford.
Local information from Village of Oxford — water lines FAQ and the gooseneck replacement map · Village of Oxford — Building Department, inspection schedule and pre-application meetings · Village of Oxford — water treatment and annual water quality reports. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Radon in Oakland County
Zone 2 is the middle EPA category — the predicted average indoor level across the county sits between 2 and 4 pCi/L. What a zone cannot tell you is anything about one house: 29% of tests actually run in Oakland County still came back at or above the EPA’s 4 pCi/L action level. 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 · Oakland 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 Oxford 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
Noah was super helpful and made sure he did the best inspection to his ability! He explained answers clearly and thoroughly. I highly recommend!
Adina BOxford, 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
A gooseneck is the short connector between the water main in the street and the service line running to a house. Historically many were lead, and under Michigan’s revised lead rules they are being replaced. The Village publishes a map showing which areas have been updated and which remain to be updated, and its own FAQ confirms the water is safe to drink.
No. The connector is buried in the street, and we do not determine what any buried pipe is made of. The Village’s map is area-based rather than address-based, so for a specific property the Village offices are the right place to ask — and it costs nothing to ask.
No. Water testing goes through a certified laboratory. The Village produces and treats its own water and publishes annual water quality reports going back to 2018, which is the right first stop for questions about the supply itself. We report the visible supply piping inside the building and the materials we can actually see.
Tuesdays and Thursdays. Building inspections run in the morning and the electrical, mechanical and plumbing inspections run in a window in the middle of the day, with the building department keeping a four-day week. On a project with a deadline, a missed Thursday means waiting until Tuesday.
Yes, and it is worth doing. The Village offers a pre-application meeting at the concept stage of a project, arranged by emailing the village manager with the property address and any sketch drawings. A fee applies where the village planner is asked or required to attend.
Yes. The Village requires all new businesses to complete a zoning compliance application before moving in, which serves both zoning permission and use and provides information to the police and fire departments. For a commercial or multi-unit building, a commercial inspection to the CCPIA standard is usually the right scope.
It comes in two groups. About 324 of roughly 1,552 units predate 1940 and 355 date from the 1970s, while the whole of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s together account for only around 156 units. Which group a property belongs to changes the whole shape of the inspection.
On this housing stock, yes. The lateral belongs to the owner, on a prewar house it may have been in the ground close to a century, and mature village planting has had the same time to find it. Unlike the water connector in the street, it can actually be looked inside. A camera inspection documents roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages, and is added to the same visit.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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