Swartz Creek, Michigan
Looking for a Swartz Creek home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Swartz Creek, 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 Swartz Creek 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 Swartz Creek and across Genesee 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 Swartz Creek 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 reportSwartz Creek housing stock
Swartz Creek has roughly 2,933 housing units and about 62% 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 1960s, which accounts for 681 homes, around 23% of the housing stock.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $156,200. There are around 237 manufactured and mobile homes in Swartz Creek. 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. A Swartz Creek 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 Swartz Creek was built
79% of homes here run on utility gas, and 18 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 42 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Water reaching a tap in Swartz Creek has been through four separate systems. The City sets out the chain plainly in its own annual report: Lake Huron, then the Karegnondi water intake and pipeline, then the Genesee County Drain Commission’s treatment plant, then the county’s distribution network, and finally the City’s own mains.
That is worth knowing because it tells you who to ask about what. Treatment questions belong to the county plant. Pressure and main breaks in your street belong to the City. And everything from the curb stop inward belongs to the property.
The second thing to know is a local ordinance with teeth. If noxious weeds are not dealt with and the owner refuses, the City may enter the land, do the work, bill the owner and place a lien against the land — enforced in the same manner as a construction lien. A lien attaches to the property rather than to the person who let the grass grow, which makes it a closing question on any parcel that has been sitting empty.
The housing is settled and mostly mid-century. Of roughly 2,933 units, 681 date from the 1960s, 464 from the 1990s and 395 from the 1950s, with 237 predating 1940 and nothing recorded as built since 2020. About 62% is single-family detached.
Before you buy
Water
The City’s annual water quality report describes the supply more precisely than most. The raw water is drawn from Lake Huron through the Karegnondi intake and pipeline and treated at the Genesee County Drain Commission’s plant, then distributed across the county and into the City’s own system before it reaches customers. The state assessed the source water as having moderately low susceptibility to potential contamination.
On lead, the report says what every Michigan report says and it is worth reading carefully rather than skipping: lead in drinking water comes primarily from materials and parts used in service lines and in home plumbing, and the City is responsible for the quality of the water it delivers and for removing lead pipes but cannot control what a house is plumbed with. It also notes that a filter certified to reduce lead by an accredited certifier is effective for that purpose.
We do not test water and we do not determine what a buried service line is made of. What a buyer’s inspection reports is the visible supply piping inside the building where it is accessible, the materials we can actually see, and any point where the material changes or a repair has been made. On a house from the 1950s or 1960s that is genuinely informative, because interior plumbing on this stock has usually been replaced in stages and the joins tell you when.
If lead is on your mind for a particular address, the City is the right place to ask what is recorded for it, and a certified laboratory is the right place to have water tested. Neither question is answered by a home inspection, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.
Liens and enforcement
The City’s weed ordinance is short, and it is worth reading in full before you buy a property that has been standing empty.
The owner, tenant or occupant of any lot — occupied or unoccupied — must destroy noxious weeds before they reach a seed bearing stage. If they refuse, the city manager may enter the land and do it, the expense is payable by the owner, and the City holds a lien against the land for the amount, enforced in the manner provided for construction liens.
The mechanism matters more than the subject. A lien against land does not follow the person who ignored the notice; it stays with the parcel. On a vacant, foreclosed or long-neglected property, that is something to establish with the City and through your title work before closing rather than after.
The same department enforces ordinances on trash and debris and on sidewalk snow removal, and issues permits not only for construction but for sidewalks, driveways, fences and signs. Permits, payments and inspection scheduling are available online.
For a buyer, the sidewalk and driveway permit requirement is quietly useful. Replacement flatwork is common on this housing stock, it changes how water moves around a building, and where it was permitted there is a dated record of when it happened.
On an inspection we report the condition of walks, drives, steps and other flatwork, along with how they pitch — toward the building or away from it — because on a sixty-year-old house a driveway or patio poured or replaced since the build is one of the commonest reasons water arrives at a foundation wall.
Stormwater
The City publishes a spill notification and complaint reporting form as part of its illicit discharge elimination program. It asks for the location of a discharge, the offending party where known, and the nature of the problem — paper waste, odor or color are the examples given — with an investigation and actions section for the responding agency, and emergencies routed to 911.
An illicit discharge is anything entering the storm system that is not stormwater. It is a shared-water issue rather than a private one, and the fact that the City provides a form for residents to report it tells you the system is being actively watched.
The household end of the same question is a connection rather than a spill: where a sump discharge, a downspout or a floor drain actually goes. Connections that seem harmless can put the wrong water in the wrong system, and on older houses those arrangements were often made long after the building went up.
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 drainage as a whole: 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.
A 1960s city
With 681 units from the 1960s and another 395 from the 1950s, more than a third of the housing here is between sixty and seventy-five years old. That produces a recognizable set of findings.
Electrical is the clearest. A house wired in 1962 was wired for a household with a fraction of today’s demand. Most have had a service upgrade, but upgrades range from a genuine rewire to a new panel with original distribution behind it, and circuits added in stages by different hands are common. What matters is not the age but the coherence and quality of what has been done since, and that is visible.
Plumbing follows the same pattern: supply lines replaced in part rather than in whole, leaving material transitions worth examining, and drain and vent layouts that are frequently original with newer fixtures attached to them.
Roofs on this stock are on their third or fourth covering. Windows have generally been replaced once, sometimes with more attention to the unit than to what happens at the opening. Heating equipment has turned over two or three times, and venting arrangements do not always keep pace with the appliance. Basements have had six decades of freeze and thaw to find every weakness.
None of that makes a 1960s house a poor buy. A great many are solid and well kept. But the difference between a well-maintained one and a neglected one is not visible from the street, and establishing which one you are looking at is most of what an inspection is for.
The buried line
The drain line from the building to the main belongs to the property owner. On a Swartz Creek house it has typically been in the ground for sixty years or more, under a lot whose planting has had the whole of that time to mature.
We will not name a material from a build year, because no authoritative source establishes what Swartz Creek laterals are generally made of, and a guess in a report is worse than no statement at all.
What matters is the condition rather than the material, and the only way to establish it is to look inside. A sewer camera inspection records 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.
Alongside it we offer radon testing, mold inspection and testing, and commercial building inspections to the CCPIA standard for offices, retail, multifamily and warehouse property — which comes up here, since roughly 38% of the housing is something other than a detached house.
You can read what our clients say, look through answers to common questions, or get in touch about a specific address in Swartz Creek.
Local information from City of Swartz Creek — 2025 consumer confidence report, water source and treatment · City of Swartz Creek — weed ordinance and the lien against the land · City of Swartz Creek — illicit discharge elimination program complaint form. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Radon in Genesee 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 · Genesee County radon and inspection coverage
Zone from the EPA Map of Radon Zones.
Why choose us
Five reasons people here pick us as their Swartz Creek 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
Outstanding precision and attention to detail! Helps being able to make a truly informed decision about a home! Also, they are very veteran-friendly! No complaints here!
Desmond SheppardFlint, MINoah Scott was very thorough and explaining things to us, especially in regard to a possible mold problem.
Claudette GranvilleFlint, 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, MIWhat happens
Questions
Lake Huron. The City states that raw water is pumped through the Karegnondi water intake and pipeline to the Genesee County Drain Commission’s treatment plant, then distributed across the county and into the City’s own distribution system before reaching customers. The state rated the source water as having moderately low susceptibility to potential contamination.
Its annual report states that lead in drinking water comes primarily from materials and parts used in service lines and in home plumbing, and that the City is responsible for the quality of the water it delivers and for removing lead pipes but cannot control what a house is plumbed with. It also notes that a filter certified to reduce lead by an accredited certifier is effective.
No. We do not test water and we do not determine buried service line materials. We report the visible supply piping inside the building where it is accessible, describe the materials we can actually see, and note where a material changes or a repair has been made. Ask the City what is recorded for the address and use a certified laboratory for testing.
Its weed ordinance provides for exactly that. Where noxious weeds are not destroyed and the owner refuses, the city manager may enter the land and do the work, the expense is payable by the owner, and the City holds a lien against the land enforced in the manner provided for construction liens. A lien attaches to the parcel rather than to a person, which makes it a title and closing question.
The building department issues and inspects permits for construction, sidewalks, driveways, fences and signs. That is useful when buying, because replacement flatwork changes how water moves around a building and a permitted job leaves a dated record of when it was done.
Reporting anything entering the storm system that is not stormwater. The City’s form asks for the location, the offending party where known, and the nature of the problem, with emergencies routed to 911. The household version of the same question is where a sump discharge or downspout actually goes, which we trace and report as far as it can be followed.
Most often 1960s. That decade is the largest single block at 681 of roughly 2,933 units, with 395 more from the 1950s and 464 from the 1990s. Nothing is recorded as built since 2020, so this is a settled city rather than a growing one.
On this housing stock, usually yes. The lateral belongs to the owner, on most properties it has been in the ground sixty years or more, and mature trees have had the same time to find it. A camera inspection documents roots, cracks, displaced joints, bellies or blockages where they exist, and is added to the same visit rather than booked separately.
More on cost, timing and what is included on the FAQ page.
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Claim the Hero DiscountNeed a Swartz Creek home inspector and not sure we reach you? Call 734-331-3269 and we will tell you.
Permits, assessing and property records for Swartz Creek are handled by the City of Swartz Creek, not by us.
From the blog
October 22, 2017
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Your local Swartz Creek home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
