Saint Clair Township, Michigan
Looking for a Saint Clair Township home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Saint Clair Township, 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 Saint Clair Township 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 Saint Clair Township and across St Clair 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 Saint Clair Township 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 reportSaint Clair Township housing stock
Saint Clair Township has roughly 3,034 housing units and about 84% 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 1990s than from any other decade — 896 homes, roughly 30% of the town.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $289,300. 92% are owner-occupied, which is high even for this area.
This is not a forecast for any one address. It is where a Saint Clair Township 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 Saint Clair Township was built
74% of homes here run on utility gas, and 25 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 267 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
St. Clair Township changed its water billing policy in March 2025, and the change is worth knowing about before you buy rather than after. The Township discontinued leak adjustments and pool-fill credits, and states the position plainly: if you have a leak or fill your pool, you are responsible for the total cost of your billing.
In a great many communities a sudden bill caused by a hidden leak can be appealed and partly written off. Here it cannot. The water that went through the meter is billed, whatever it was doing.
That turns a plumbing inspection into something with a direct and measurable value. A leaking toilet flapper or a weeping supply fitting is a minor repair when you find it and an expensive surprise when the bill finds it for you — and the Township itself points out that a single leaking toilet can waste up to 2,500 gallons in twenty-four hours.
The other practical thing to plan around is the building department, which keeps office hours of Friday morning, eight until noon, or by appointment. Four hours a week is perfectly workable, but only if you are not leaving your questions until the last day of a contingency period.
The housing is mostly late-century: 896 units date from the 1990s and about 1,437 — nearly half the township — were built between 1980 and 1999.
Before you buy
Water
The Township’s water department page records the policy change directly. As of 17 March 2025 the practice of granting leak adjustments and pool-fill credits was discontinued, and a customer with a leak or a filled pool is responsible for the total cost of the billing.
That is a reasonable position for a small water system to take, and it is stated openly rather than buried. But it does shift risk squarely onto the property owner, and a buyer becomes that owner on the day of closing — including for a leak that started under the previous owner and has simply not shown up on a bill yet.
So on a property here we pay particular attention to the things that leak quietly. Toilets are the usual culprit, because a failed flapper wastes continuously and silently. We operate fixtures, look for weeping at accessible supply connections and shut-off valves, check under sinks and around the water heater, examine visible supply lines in basements and crawl spaces, and look for staining, corrosion and mineral trails that indicate a leak that has been going on for a while.
We also check the meter where it is accessible. With no water being used in the house, a moving dial means water is going somewhere — and that is a finding worth having in writing before you are the one being billed for it.
There are limits worth being honest about. We do not open walls, we do not pressure-test the system, and a leak in a buried service line or inside a wall cavity may leave no visible evidence on the day. What we can do is check everything accessible thoroughly, and tell you clearly if the meter suggests something is running that we cannot see.
The Township publishes its own guidance on this too, which is unusually helpful of it.
Finding a leak
The Township has published advice on finding leaks before a bill spikes, and it is sound advice that any owner here should act on monthly.
Its meter test is the simplest diagnostic there is: find the meter, usually in the basement or crawl space, and watch the red dial arm with nothing running in the house. If it is turning clockwise, water is flowing through the system somewhere.
For toilets specifically the Township suggests two tests. Put food coloring in the tank and wait — if the color reaches the bowl, the flapper seal is leaking. Or sprinkle powder on the surface of the tank water: if it drifts toward the overflow tube, the ballcock needs adjusting.
Beyond toilets, the sources it names are the ones we see too: dripping faucets, outdoor garden faucets, ice makers, refrigerator water dispensers, dishwashers, washing machines and backup sump pumps. Outdoor faucets and appliance supply lines are worth particular attention on a property that has stood empty during a sale.
A backup sump pump on the list is a useful reminder that not every water problem announces itself as a puddle. Equipment that runs when it should not is just as capable of costing money quietly.
The Township also publishes annual water quality reports, operates a cross-connection control program through its customer portal, has a water meter replacement notice, and lists financial assistance resources for residents facing hardship. There is a separate emergencies-only number for water and sewer, which is worth putting in your phone on the day you move in.
Permits
The building department keeps office hours of Friday, eight in the morning until noon, or by appointment. It publishes building and permit codes, a zoning map, ordinances and guidelines, a lot split application and accessory building setback guidelines, and it maintains separate zoning administration and code enforcement contacts.
A four-hour public window is not a problem, but it is a scheduling fact. If you are buying here and you want permit history, a zoning question answered, or confirmation of what a previous owner did to a property, raise it in the first week of your contingency period rather than the last. An unanswered question on the Thursday before closing has nowhere to go.
The accessory building setback guidelines are worth a look if a property has a detached garage, pole barn or large shed, or if you are planning one. Setback questions are among the more common reasons a structure turns out not to have been permitted as built.
For anything to do with a well or a septic system, the Township directs inquiries to the county health department’s environmental health division. That is the right place to go, and worth doing early on any property not on township water and sewer, because a septic evaluation is specialist work that we do not carry out and that takes its own time to arrange.
A buyer’s inspection is not a permit search and does not assess zoning compliance. What it does is tell you which parts of a property to ask about, so that the four hours you have are spent on the right questions.
The housing
The largest group here is the 896 units from the 1990s, with 506 from the 1980s and 379 from the 2000s. Nearly half the township was built between 1980 and 1999. There is also a small older core of 259 units predating 1940.
Late-century houses are at a specific and predictable stage. Roof coverings are on their first or second replacement. Water heaters are typically on their second or third. Furnaces and air conditioning condensers from the original build have reached or passed the end of their expected service lives, and the ones that have been replaced were often replaced under time pressure rather than by plan.
Windows and exterior doors from that era are usually the original units, and their seals and hardware are where the wear shows. Decks built with the house are at the age where ledger connections, fasteners and post bases genuinely need looking at rather than glancing at.
Plumbing is the part that connects back to the water bill. Houses of this period were plumbed with a range of supply materials, and fittings, valves and appliance connections thirty years old are exactly the components that begin to weep. We check what is accessible and report what we find rather than generalizing from the build year.
On the 259 pre-1940 houses the questions are different again: electrical rebuilt in stages, plumbing renewed in part with material transitions at the joins, several generations of roof covering, and heating equipment fitted into older venting arrangements.
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
On any property here that connects to a public sewer, the line running from the building out to the main belongs to the owner, and no visual inspection reaches inside it.
On the 1980s and 1990s housing that pipe is thirty to forty-five years old, which is young enough that people assume it is fine and old enough that it often is not. Roots find joints regardless of age where trees have matured around a lot, and a section that settled during the original backfill will still be settled today.
We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what St. Clair Township 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. On a property served by a septic system instead, the same camera documents the building drain out to the tank — the owner’s pipe, and one a septic evaluation does not examine.
A 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 St. Clair Township.
Local information from St. Clair Township — water department and the March 2025 leak adjustment policy · St. Clair Township — how to check for water leaks before a bill spikes · St. Clair Township — building department, hours and guidelines · St. Clair Township — ordinances. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Why choose us
Five reasons people here pick us as their Saint Clair Township 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
No. As of 17 March 2025 the Township discontinued leak adjustments and pool-fill credits, and states that a customer with a leak or a filled pool is responsible for the total cost of the billing. That makes finding a leak before closing worth real money.
Use the Township’s own test. Find the water meter, usually in the basement or crawl space, and watch the red dial with nothing running in the house. If it turns clockwise, water is flowing somewhere. The Township recommends checking monthly.
Toilets, because a failed flapper wastes continuously and silently — the Township notes a leaking toilet can waste up to 2,500 gallons in twenty-four hours. It also names dripping faucets, outdoor garden faucets, ice makers, refrigerator water dispensers, dishwashers, washing machines and backup sump pumps.
No, and we will say so plainly. We check all accessible fixtures, supply connections, valves, visible piping and the meter, and we report staining, corrosion and mineral trails that show a long-running leak. But we do not open walls or pressure-test, so a leak in a buried line or a wall cavity may leave nothing visible on the day.
Friday from eight in the morning until noon, or by appointment. Four hours a week is workable, but it means permit history and zoning questions should be raised in the first week of a contingency period rather than the last.
The county health department’s environmental health division, which is where the Township directs those questions. Arrange a septic evaluation early on any property not on township water and sewer — it is specialist work we do not carry out.
First or second roof coverings, water heaters on their second or third, and original furnaces and condensers at or past the end of their expected lives. Original windows and doors showing wear at seals and hardware, and decks at the age where ledger connections and fasteners need proper examination.
Yes. A thirty to forty-five-year-old lateral is old enough to have taken root intrusion or kept a settled section from the original backfill, and young enough that people assume it is fine. A camera inspection records its actual condition and is added to the same visit.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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From the blog
October 22, 2017
November 23, 2020
July 2, 2020
Your local Saint Clair Township home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
