Walled Lake, Michigan
Looking for a Walled Lake home inspector? We do certified home, commercial, mold and radon inspections in Walled Lake, 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 Walled Lake 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 Walled Lake 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 a Walled Lake 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 reportWalled Lake housing stock
Walled Lake has roughly 3,508 housing units and about 36% 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: 868 homes, about 25% of everything standing today. It is also less detached-house territory than most of the area at 36%, so condominiums, duplexes and small multi-family buildings are a bigger share of what we inspect here — and those bring their own questions about what is yours to maintain and what belongs to the association.
The median owner-occupied home here is valued at $192,800.
None of this says anything about the specific house you are buying. It is the shortlist a Walled Lake 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 Walled Lake was built
83% of homes here run on utility gas. Another 81 use bottled or LP gas.
Local knowledge
Walled Lake has the smallest share of detached houses of any community we cover. Only about 36% of its roughly 3,508 housing units are single-family detached, which means nearly two out of three properties here are a condominium, a townhouse, an apartment or something else attached.
That is not incidental — it is what the city is. Of the whole stock, 2,227 units were built between 1970 and 1999, which is precisely the era that produced the region’s condominium and apartment developments. Buy here and the odds are you are buying a unit rather than a building.
It changes the questions in a specific way. On an attached property the line between what you own and what the association maintains decides who pays for what, and that line is rarely where a buyer assumes it is. Roofs, siding, windows, decks, balconies and common drainage are where the confusion concentrates.
The second thing worth knowing is that the water arriving at the tap passes through three different organizations before it gets there, and the City is only one of them. And the third is that the municipal inspection calendar here is the narrowest we have found anywhere: every inspection happens in the morning, Monday to Wednesday.
Before you buy
Attached housing
On a detached house, everything you can see is yours. On an attached one it is not, and the documents rather than the walls decide the boundary.
The usual arrangement gives the association the roof, the exterior cladding, the structure and the common grounds, and gives the owner everything from the interior surfaces inward. But the usual arrangement is not universal. Some associations hand the owner the windows. Some hand over the deck or balcony. Some make the furnace, the water heater or the air conditioning condenser the owner’s even though it sits outside the unit. Limited common elements — the parts assigned to one unit but owned collectively — are where the surprises live.
We inspect and report on the accessible components of the unit and, where access allows, the building it sits in: the roof and its drainage where it can be seen, the exterior, the foundation and structure, the electrical, the heating and cooling, the plumbing, and the interior. A finding on the roof of a twelve-unit building is still a finding worth having, because a special assessment is paid by the owners.
What we cannot do is tell you who pays for it. That is in the master deed, the bylaws and the association’s financial position, and reading those before closing is worth the evening it takes. A reserve fund that has not kept pace with a 1980s building’s roof is a real financial risk and it will not appear in any inspection report.
For a small multi-unit building bought as an investment rather than a home, our commercial building inspections follow the CCPIA standard and cover multifamily, office, retail and warehouse property. That is a different scope and a different report from a residential inspection, and in a city with this tenure mix it is a regular request. On a detached house, a standard buyer’s inspection is the right choice.
Water
The City’s annual water quality report sets out an arrangement worth understanding. The City buys its drinking water wholesale from the Great Lakes Water Authority, which draws surface water from Lake Huron and treats it at a plant in St Clair County. The City then employs the Oakland County Water Resources Commission as its water system supply agent, and it is that county agency which operates the mains carrying water to your home’s service line.
So three organizations stand behind the tap. The county agency also carries out the required lead and copper sampling on the City’s behalf and is on call around the clock for system emergencies, which is a reasonable arrangement for a city of this size.
Treatment includes chlorine, alum to clear fine particles, fluoride, filtration through sand beds, and a small addition of phosphoric acid before the water leaves the plant. That last step is corrosion control — it limits what the water draws out of the pipes and fittings it passes through on the way to a tap, including the plumbing inside a house.
One detail matters for anyone working out which rules apply to a property: the City also supplies drinking water to a limited area of the Village of Wolverine Lake and of Commerce Township. Being on Walled Lake water is not proof of being in Walled Lake, and the City’s permit and ordinance requirements follow the city limits rather than the water main.
We do not test water and we do not determine service line materials. What an 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. Water testing goes through a certified laboratory.
Permits
The City issues building, electrical, mechanical and plumbing permits itself, so a records request at city hall should produce a property’s full history rather than sending you to a county or a state database for the trades.
What sets the permits page apart is how much guidance it publishes alongside the applications. There is a plan review checklist for residential new construction and another packet for additions and renovations, deck construction guidance keyed to the residential code, the City’s own engineering standards and details, a soil erosion application, a right of way permit and a building use change form.
Those checklists are worth a look even if you are not building anything, because they tell you what the City expects to see in work that was done properly — which is a useful lens when you are looking at an addition or a finished basement somebody else built.
Cross connection control here also runs through the county water agency, and the City links its backflow prevention material from the same page. The domestic end of that is small hardware — vacuum breakers on exterior hose bibs, air gaps at appliance drains — and it is the sort of thing that quietly disappears during a remodel. We report what we find on the accessible plumbing.
The City publishes its enforced code editions plainly, which is more than many do, and the Fire Department separately requires the current international fire code with local amendments — relevant on multi-unit buildings, where fire separation, alarms and egress are part of the picture in a way they are not in a detached house.
Scheduling
If you are planning permitted work around a closing, this is the constraint to build the plan around.
Building inspections happen on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. Electrical and mechanical inspections happen on Monday and Tuesday mornings. Plumbing inspections happen Tuesday and Wednesday, on a schedule the City notes changed in February 2026. Every one of them requires 24 hours notice, and city hall itself runs a four-day week from Monday to Thursday.
In practice that means the municipal week for construction work in this city ends on a Wednesday lunchtime. Miss it and the next opportunity is the following Monday. On a project with a deadline attached, that is the detail most likely to cost you a week, and it is entirely avoidable if you know it going in.
Our own scheduling is separate and works around real estate timetables rather than office hours. Get in touch and we will tell you honestly what we can fit and when.
One more local obligation worth knowing before winter: the Department of Public Services states that clearing the sidewalk abutting your property is your responsibility under City ordinance. It also notes that the City does not plow driveway approaches and is not responsible for items left in the street right of way.
The buildings
With 2,227 units built between 1970 and 1999, most property here is now thirty to fifty-five years old, and that age brings a recognizable pattern.
Original roofs are long gone; second and third coverings are the norm, and on multi-unit buildings the roof is a shared asset with a shared cost. The first and often second generation of furnaces, water heaters and air conditioning has turned over, and the quality of those replacements varies a great deal. Windows and exterior finishes from the build are at the stage where deferred maintenance shows. Grading has settled, and on a site laid out with shared drainage a settled grade affects more than one unit.
The 484 units from the 1950s and the 164 predating 1940 are a different proposition again — older lakeside and village housing, where the questions are about accumulated alterations rather than first replacements.
The drain line from a building to the main belongs to the property, and on a shared building that generally means it belongs to the association rather than to you. It is still worth knowing its condition, because a failure is paid for by the owners either way. 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 it is worth discussing in advance on an attached property, where access to the right cleanout is the first question.
We also offer radon testing and mold inspection and testing, both of which can be added to a residential or commercial visit. You can read what our clients say, look through answers to common questions, or get in touch about a specific address in Walled Lake.
Local information from City of Walled Lake — 2025 annual water quality report and supply arrangements · City of Walled Lake — permits, plan review checklists and inspection schedule · City of Walled Lake — Department of Public Services, roads and sidewalk duties. 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 Walled Lake 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, MIExcellent sums up the entire experience, from the initial call to set up the appointment with staff that was informative and helpful, up until the actual inspection that was very professional and thorough with any and all questions I had answered. I would highly recommend Trademark to anyone who needs inspection services. Thanks again Curt, my inspector, for an excellent job.
Johnny Thomas JrSouthfield, MIWhat happens
Questions
Yes, and it is most of what comes up here — only about 36% of the city’s housing is single-family detached. We inspect the accessible components of the unit and, where access allows, the building it sits in. The association documents decide where your responsibility ends and the association’s begins, and those are worth reading before you close.
Where the boundary of your ownership actually falls, because it is not always where buyers assume. Windows, decks and balconies, and sometimes the furnace or air conditioning condenser, can be the owner’s responsibility even when they sit outside the unit. The reserve fund matters too: a shared roof on an eighties building is paid for by the owners one way or another.
The City buys it wholesale from the Great Lakes Water Authority, which draws surface water from Lake Huron and treats it at a plant in St Clair County. The Oakland County Water Resources Commission then acts as the City’s supply agent and operates the mains that carry the water to each home’s service line, as well as carrying out the required lead and copper sampling.
Not necessarily. The City states that it also supplies drinking water to a limited area of the Village of Wolverine Lake and Commerce Township. The City’s permit requirements and ordinances follow the city limits rather than the water main, so it is worth confirming which government your address sits in.
In mornings, early in the week. Building inspections run Monday to Wednesday mornings, electrical and mechanical run Monday and Tuesday mornings, and plumbing runs Tuesday and Wednesday on a schedule the City notes changed in February 2026. All require 24 hours notice, and city hall itself is open Monday to Thursday.
All of them — building, electrical, mechanical and plumbing. That means one records request should produce a property’s full permit history. The City also publishes plan review checklists for new construction and for additions and renovations, along with deck construction guidance and its own engineering standards.
Yours. The Department of Public Services states that clearing the sidewalk abutting your property is the property owner’s responsibility under City ordinance. It also notes that the City does not plow driveway approaches and is not responsible for items left in the street right of way.
Often yes, but it is worth discussing in advance, because access to the right cleanout is the first question on an attached building and the line itself usually belongs to the association rather than to the unit owner. Where it can be done, 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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From the blog
October 22, 2017
Your local Walled Lake home inspector, seven days a week. Home inspection reports in 24 hours.
