Thomas Township, Michigan
Looking for a Thomas Township home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Thomas 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 Thomas 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 Thomas Township and across Saginaw 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 Thomas 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 reportThomas Township housing stock
Thomas Township has roughly 5,379 housing units and about 77% 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 1970s — 1,323 homes, around 25% of the town.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $172,500. 89% are owner-occupied, which is high even for this area. There are around 315 manufactured and mobile homes in Thomas Township. Those are a different inspection — the questions are about the frame, the anchoring and the skirting rather than a basement.
None of this is a prediction about a particular house. It is where a Thomas Township 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 Thomas Township was built
79% of homes here run on utility gas, and 37 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 233 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Thomas Township has the most thoroughly documented roofing regime we have come across, and it is worth understanding whether you are buying, selling or re-roofing here.
A building permit is required for all re-roofing. The inspection card must be posted and accessible on the outside of the house until the final inspection is done. And the Township names three separate inspections — an open roof inspection, a flashing inspection and a final — each requiring the building inspector to be called 24 hours ahead.
Then it does something no other municipality in this project does. Recognizing that an inspector cannot stand on a roof through the whole job, the Township accepts photographs — and lists exactly which seven it wants: the roof deck after the old shingles come off, any sheathing replaced, the ice and water shield, the valleys with ice and water shield, the flashings around chimneys and alongside walls, the ridge vent openings, and the completed project.
It also states the consequence of not sending them: failure to submit pictures may result in the builder removing some shingles for inspection purposes.
For a buyer, that is unusually good news. On a house re-roofed here under permit, there should be a photographic record of the parts of a roof that become invisible the moment the last shingle goes down. It is worth asking for.
Before you buy
Roofs
Whether photographs can stand in for an inspector on a roof is a real disagreement between Michigan municipalities, and this project now has both sides of it in writing.
Thomas Township accepts them and specifies the seven shots. Berkley, in Oakland County, states that pictures in lieu of an open roof inspection are generally not acceptable and sends an inspector to look at the bare deck.
Both positions are defensible, and the difference tells you what to ask for. In Berkley you ask whether there were two inspection records against the permit. Here you ask whether the photographs were submitted, and if so whether the seller can produce them.
The Township’s roofing handout and its guide to roofing also set out the standards those photographs are meant to evidence. Ice and water shield must run from the lowest edges of all roof surfaces to a point at least 24 inches inside the interior wall line — which on a wide overhang is further up the slope than people expect. Flashings must be installed at all wall and roof intersections, wherever the slope or direction changes, and around every roof opening, in corrosion resistant metal at least 0.019 inches thick. An open valley lined with metal must be at least 24 inches wide. Starter strips are required at all edges to stop wind and water getting under the shingles.
On layovers the Township is firm: asphalt shingles must go over solidly sheathed decks or nominal one-inch boards, and shingling over existing shingles requires the installer to show in detail how ice dam protection, flashing and ventilation will be handled, on plans submitted for review.
What an inspection can tell you on a finished roof is the covering and its condition, the flashings and penetrations, the edges and the ventilation, and whether a covering appears to have been laid over an older one — plus what the attic shows from underneath, where it is accessible. A buyer’s inspection covers that alongside the structure, foundation, drainage, electrical, heating and cooling, plumbing and the accessible interior.
Permits
One rule catches homeowners out here. If you hire a licensed contractor, the license holder must pull the building permit from the Township — the homeowner cannot do it on their behalf. A homeowner may pull a permit for work they are doing themselves, but an unlicensed individual may not install a roof.
That matters when you are looking at a property’s history. A permit pulled by a homeowner means the homeowner did the work. A permit pulled by a licensed contractor names who was responsible. Neither is automatically better, but they are different things and the file tells you which.
The Township’s permit information page is generous with guidance: applications for roofing, new construction, swimming pools, accessory buildings, demolition, signs and the trades, alongside brochures on roofing, accessory buildings, decks and swimming pools, plan review checklists for new construction and accessory buildings, a demolition checklist, energy code worksheets, a contractor acknowledgement form for the Michigan Uniform Energy Code, tree planting requirements, contractor registration and a fee schedule.
It also quotes the residential code provision that sits behind all of it — that anyone intending to construct, enlarge, alter, repair, move, demolish or change the occupancy of a building, or to install, alter, repair, remove, convert or replace any electrical, gas, mechanical or plumbing system, must first apply to the building official and obtain a permit. It is worth reading that list next to a house you are buying, because it covers a great deal of what previous owners typically did.
Water
The Township’s Department of Public Works publishes an unusually full account of where the water comes from, and it explains something about the housing.
The original distribution system was built on eleven wells served by three pumping stations, completed in 1956, producing 720,000 gallons a day through 24 miles of main and 178 hydrants, with a 300,000-gallon elevated tank for fire protection. As the township grew through the late 1960s and 1970s that was not enough, and in 1969 the Township contracted with the City of Saginaw for treated surface water, connected by two water main crossings of the Tittabawassee River. Industrial demand drove further expansion through the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Today the system serves around 5,000 customers, averaging 2.15 million gallons a day.
One detail in that history is worth knowing as a homeowner: the Township board has followed a deliberate policy of looping together dead-ended water lines. A dead end is where water sits rather than moves, and looping is how a distribution system avoids that. It is a sign of a system being managed rather than merely maintained.
The Township publishes cross connection information alongside this, and cross connections are the part of the picture that sits inside your house. The usual domestic ones are threaded hose bibbs without vacuum breakers, irrigation connections, boiler fill arrangements and softener or treatment drains without an air gap. All of those are things we look at and report.
We do not test water. That is a separate discipline with its own certified laboratories, and the Township’s published drinking water quality report is the authoritative source for what is in the supply. And one jurisdiction note while you are asking: Township offices carry a Saginaw mailing address, and the City of Saginaw is a separate municipality — which also happens to be the Township’s water supplier. Three different things behind one word again.
The buried line
Where a property here is on the public sewer, the buried lateral running from the building to the main is the one component no visual inspection reaches — and unlike the roof, there are no photographs of it.
On a 1970s house, the largest single slice of this township at 1,323 units, that pipe has been in the ground fifty years. On a 1990s house, thirty, with the landscaping planted alongside it now fully mature. 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 Thomas Township laterals are generally made of.
On a property with a septic system, the question is a different one and belongs to a county health department evaluation rather than to us. We do not evaluate septic systems.
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 Thomas Township — permit information and published guidance · Thomas Township — roofing information handout and required photographs · Thomas Township — a guide to roofing your home · Thomas Township — Department of Public Works and water system history. Municipal requirements change — verify current details with the municipality.
Why choose us
Five reasons people here pick us as their Thomas 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
A shout out to Noah for the inspection of our new house. He was very professional and thorough. He is also accessible after the fact — I have called him twice for clarification on our roofing issue and he has been so friendly and answered all of my questions.
Susan LawhonBridgeport, 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 — a building permit is required for all re-roofing projects. The inspection card must be posted and accessible on the outside of the house until the final inspection, and the building inspector must be called 24 hours before each of three inspections: the open roof inspection, the flashing inspection and the final.
Yes, and the Township lists exactly which seven it wants: the roof deck after the old shingles are removed, any sheathing replaced, the ice and water shield, the valleys with ice and water shield, the flashings around chimneys and alongside walls, the ridge vent openings, and the completed project. It also warns that failing to submit them may result in the builder removing some shingles for inspection. Not every municipality takes this view — Berkley, for one, says pictures are generally not acceptable in place of an open roof inspection.
The permit, and the photographs. On a permitted re-roof here there should be a documentary record of the deck, the sheathing, the ice and water shield, the valleys, the flashings and the ridge vents — the parts of a roof that become invisible the moment the last shingle is down. Whether the seller still has copies is another matter, but it is worth asking, and the Building Department holds the permit file.
Worth establishing. The Township requires asphalt shingles to be installed over solidly sheathed decks or nominal one-inch boards, and states that shingling over existing shingles requires the installer to show in detail how ice dam protection, flashing and ventilation will be handled, on plans submitted for review. A layover done properly is legitimate; the question is whether anyone documented how.
Only for work you are doing yourself. The Township states that if you hire a licensed individual, the license holder must pull the building permit — the homeowner cannot do it for them — and that unlicensed individuals may not install a roof. When you are researching a property, who pulled the permit tells you who was responsible for the work.
Originally from eleven Township wells and three pumping stations completed in 1956. Since 1969 the Township has contracted with the City of Saginaw for treated surface water, brought across the Tittabawassee River by two main crossings. The system now serves around 5,000 customers. The Township publishes its drinking water quality report and cross connection information; we do not test water, which is a separate discipline with its own certified laboratories.
Mixed, with two peaks. Of about 5,379 housing units, 1,323 date from the 1970s and 1,016 from the 1990s, with 824 from the 1960s and 788 from the 2000s, and 313 predating 1940. Around 77% is single-family detached. That spread means the age and condition of the specific building tells you far more here than any generalization about the township.
On a public sewer, yes. Unlike the roof, there are no photographs of the buried lateral, and no visual inspection reaches it. On a 1970s house it has been in the ground fifty years with mature landscaping over it. 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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Your local Thomas Township home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
