Temperance, Michigan
Looking for a Temperance home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Temperance, 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 Temperance 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 Temperance and across Monroe 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 Temperance 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 reportTemperance housing stock
Temperance has roughly 3,895 housing units and about 76% of them are single-family detached. Housing that went up mostly in one era has mostly one era’s problems — which is genuinely useful to know before you buy, because it tells you what to look at first.
Most of it went up in the 1990s — 721 homes, around 19% of the town.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $197,700.
None of this is a prediction about a particular house. It is where a Temperance home inspector starts looking in a home of this age, and what we photograph and write up either way.
Housing figures: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2022 five-year estimates.
When Temperance was built
91% of homes here run on utility gas. Another 64 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
There is a record of every property in Temperance that most buyers never think to ask for, and it exists because the state requires it.
Temperance has no government of its own — it is an unincorporated community inside Bedford Township — and the Township’s Assessor carries out what it describes as a state mandate to physically inspect all properties. Those inspections involve measuring the structures on the property, verifying information with the owner where possible, taking digital photographs, checking the land description, and entering all of it into the record.
So somebody has already measured the building, photographed it and written down what is on the land. For a buyer that is genuinely useful: it is an independent description of what exists, from a source with no stake in the sale.
But it is worth being exact about what that record is, because the word “inspection” is doing two very different jobs. An assessor measures in order to value. An inspector looks in order to report condition. The assessor’s file can tell you the footprint of the garage and whether an addition was recorded. It cannot tell you whether the roof has five years left in it, whether the furnace is safe, or what the foundation is doing.
The housing here is the older and least detached part of the township: of about 3,895 units, 721 date from the 1990s, 665 from the 1960s and 631 from the 1970s, with a median year of 1976 and around 76% single-family detached — against 92% in neighboring Lambertville and 84% across Bedford Township as a whole.
Before you buy
Two kinds of inspection
The Assessing Department describes its three duties plainly: inventory and list all property, evaluate taxable property equitably, and calculate the taxable value of every taxable piece of property. Valuation is an annual procedure with an effective date of 31 December.
The office holds section maps, capped values, taxable values, equalized values, property descriptions, property sales and listings, property status and location, appraisal studies and Board of Review information. That is a substantial amount of public record about a building you are thinking of buying.
Used well, it answers questions a listing will not. Does the recorded square footage match what you were told? Is the garage or the addition on the record at all? What does the land description actually cover? When did the property last sell, and for what? These are cheap questions with documented answers.
What the file cannot do is stand in for an inspection, and it is worth saying why rather than just asserting it. An assessor is measuring and classifying in order to arrive at a value that is fair relative to every other property in the township. The visit is not a search for defects, the photographs are exterior records rather than diagnostic images, and nothing in the process involves operating the heating, testing outlets, entering the attic or looking at the foundation from inside.
A buyer’s inspection does exactly those things: the roof, structure, foundation, drainage, electrical, heating and cooling, plumbing and the accessible interior, reported to you with photographs and plain language. The two records are complementary — one describes what is there, the other describes what condition it is in — and the useful move is to get both.
One further point the Assessing page raises indirectly. Michigan taxable value uncaps on a transfer of ownership, so what a buyer pays is not what the seller has been paying. We are not tax advisers and will not put a number on it, but the Assessor’s office is exactly the right place to ask before you commit, and it is a question far better asked in advance than discovered on a first bill.
Ordinance enforcement
Bedford Township’s Ordinance Department responds to violations across the township, and the way it is set up tells you something about how enforcement works here.
There are three ordinance officers, each reachable directly by phone with voicemail if they are out. A complaint form can be submitted in person, by mail or by email. If an officer is unavailable and the matter needs attention, the Supervisor’s office is the fallback. And for anything after hours or at the weekend that cannot wait until the next business day, the Township directs residents to the Sheriff’s non-emergency number.
This is a complaint-driven system, which is normal and sensible for a township of this size. But it has a consequence worth understanding as a buyer: the absence of an enforcement record is not evidence that everything on a property complies. It may simply mean nobody has complained.
That applies to the things neighbors notice and report — an accessory building in the wrong place, a fence over height, a vehicle situation, blight — and it applies just as much to the things nobody outside the house can see at all. Work done inside without a permit generates no complaint because there is nothing to complain about from the street.
So on a property where work has obviously been done, the useful pairing is a permit search at the Township’s Building Department and a physical inspection of the work itself. The file tells you what was declared; the building tells you what was done and how it has held up.
A mixed housing stock
Temperance has no dominant building era. Of about 3,895 units, 721 date from the 1990s, 665 from the 1960s, 631 from the 1970s and 491 from the 1950s, with 322 built since 2010 and 303 predating 1940.
That spread means the age of a specific building tells you far more than any average. A 1962 house and a 1996 house on the same road are asking completely different questions. The older one has had its systems replaced in stages by different people over sixty years, and the interesting findings are at the junctions between eras. The newer one still has most of its original components, all installed in the same year and all reaching the end of a normal service life at roughly the same time.
The other distinguishing feature is that around 24% of the housing here is not single-family detached — a noticeably higher share than in neighboring Lambertville, where the figure is closer to 8%. On attached and multi-unit property, the first question is what an association owns and what you own. Roofs, exterior walls, windows, utility runs and grounds are divided differently in different developments, and the governing documents rather than the assumption are what settle it.
On the water side, what an inspection covers is the building and the ground immediately around it: accessible grading and how it falls away from the foundation, gutters and downspouts and where they discharge, foundation conditions, the basement or crawlspace and what it shows about past water, and any sump equipment and where its discharge goes.
The flood mapping and Elevation Certificate questions that matter across this part of Monroe County are set out on our Bedford Township page, since the same township rules govern here.
The buried line
The Assessor has measured the structures, photographed the property and written down the land description. Nobody has looked at the pipe running from the building to the sewer main, because nothing in any of those processes reaches it.
On a 1960s house — 665 units here — that lateral has been in the ground sixty years. On a 1990s house, thirty, with the landscaping planted at construction now fully mature above it. On one of the 303 units predating 1940, considerably longer. Any of those 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 laterals in this part of Bedford Township are generally made of — and across four decades of building, more than one material is certainly down there.
On a property served by a septic system rather than a sewer connection, the tank and drainfield belong to a county health department evaluation. We do not evaluate septic systems and we do not test water. The run between the house and the tank, though, is still the owner’s, and it is exactly what a camera looks at.
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. Get in touch to talk through a particular property.
Local information from Bedford Township — Assessing Department and the state inspection mandate · Bedford Township — Ordinance Department · Bedford Township — Building Department. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Radon in Monroe 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 · Monroe County radon and inspection coverage
Zone from the EPA Map of Radon Zones.
Why choose us
Five reasons people here pick us as their Temperance 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
Mitch was great and thorough the our inspection. He provided explanations and suggestions throughout the service. Highly recommend!
Jaynie GMonroe, 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
Yes, and it is worth asking for. The Assessor carries out a state mandate to physically inspect all properties in the township — measuring the structures, verifying information with the owner where possible, taking digital photographs and checking the land description. The office also holds section maps, property descriptions, sales listings and valuation records.
Not in the sense that matters to a buyer. An assessor measures in order to value; an inspector looks in order to report condition. The assessor’s visit is not a search for defects and does not involve operating the heating, testing outlets, entering the attic or examining the foundation. The two records are complementary — one says what is there, the other says what condition it is in.
No. Michigan taxable value uncaps on a transfer of ownership, so what a buyer pays is not what the seller has been paying. We are not tax advisers and will not put a number on it, but the Assessing Department is the right office to ask, and it is far better asked before you commit than discovered on a first bill.
Bedford Township. Temperance is an unincorporated community and census-designated place with no government of its own, so building permits, zoning, ordinance enforcement, assessing and utility billing are all Township functions. When asking about a specific property, a parcel number is worth more than an address, because the address carries a community name no government answers to.
Not necessarily. Enforcement here is complaint-driven — three ordinance officers responding to complaints submitted in person, by mail or by email, with the Sheriff’s non-emergency number for out-of-hours matters. An absence of records may simply mean nobody complained, and work done inside a house generates no complaint at all because there is nothing to see from the street.
Spread across four decades with no dominant era. Of about 3,895 housing units, 721 date from the 1990s, 665 from the 1960s, 631 from the 1970s and 491 from the 1950s, with 322 built since 2010 and 303 predating 1940. The median year is 1976. That means the specific building tells you far more than any average about the township.
It is the older and least detached part of it. Around 76% of housing here is single-family detached, against roughly 92% in neighboring Lambertville and 84% across Bedford Township as a whole. On attached and multi-unit property the first question is what an association owns and what you own — roofs, exterior walls, windows, utility runs and grounds are divided differently in different developments.
Yes. The Assessor has measured and photographed the building, but nothing in that process reaches the buried line, and no visual inspection does either. On a 1960s house it has been in the ground sixty years; on a 1990s house, thirty, with mature landscaping over it. 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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Your local Temperance home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
