Home Inspector in Bloomfield Hills, MI

Bloomfield Hills is not a typical inspection. The city has roughly 4,500 residents spread across five square miles — stately homes on large wooded lots, many of them built from the 1920s and '30s when Detroit families first developed the area, layered with mid-century architecture and modern luxury construction. Nearly 40% of owner-occupied homes here are valued over a million dollars.

That changes what an inspection has to cover. These houses are not just older, they are bigger and more complicated: multiple HVAC zones installed in different decades, roofs in slate, tile, or cedar rather than asphalt, electrical services that have been extended and re-extended across ninety years, and square footage that takes real time to walk properly. Plan for a longer inspection than a standard suburban colonial, and price accordingly — my fee scales with square footage above 2,000.

The single most overlooked item in this market is the septic system. Many Bloomfield Hills properties are on on-site septic rather than municipal sewer, regulated by the Oakland County Health Department. A standard home inspection does not evaluate a septic system, and I will tell you that plainly rather than let you assume it was covered. If the home you are buying is on septic, you need a separate septic evaluation before you close — I will tell you where to get one.

1920s–1950s estates and Cranbrook-era homes

The city’s founding-era homes around Cranbrook, along Lone Pine and Woodward, and on the lake lots at Wing, Square, Long, Island, and Gilbert lakes make up roughly a quarter of the city’s stock, built before 1960. Beyond the slate roofs and layered electrical in the intro, homes from this era commonly have steam or hot-water boilers with cast-iron radiators, galvanized supply lines behind renovated kitchens, clay laterals or a septic system older than any record, original steel casement windows, and asbestos in pipe wrap, plaster, and floor tile. On a slate or tile roof I do not walk it; I fly it, photograph every slipped or cracked unit and the flashing at each valley and chimney, and tell you whether what I see is a repair or a re-roof, because the difference is six figures.

1960s mid-century moderns and contemporaries (22% of the city)

The 1960s are the single largest decade in the city, and this is where Bloomfield Hills gets its architect-designed contemporaries and ranches with flat or low-slope roofs, walls of glass, and radiant heat in the slab. Homes built from about 1965 through 1973 commonly have aluminum branch-circuit wiring, and Federal Pacific and Zinsco panels turn up throughout the decade. Flat and low-slope roofs from this era have been recovered several times and pond where the structure has deflected; I fly them, look for the ponding rings and the soft spots, and run the thermal camera on the ceilings below. On radiant slabs I check the boiler and manifolds and run the thermal camera across the floor to see which loops are actually delivering heat, because a failed loop under terrazzo has no cheap answer.

1970s–1990s luxury subdivisions (about 45% of the city)

The 1980s alone account for 23 percent of the city’s housing, and together with the 1970s and 1990s this is the era of the big colonial and Tudor subdivisions in the township like Wabeek, Turtle Lake, and Barrington Park. Homes from this era commonly have polybutylene supply piping if built between 1978 and 1995, multiple furnaces and air handlers replaced on different schedules, cedar shake roofs at or past end of life, hardboard siding and trim rotting at the bottom edges, and builder-grade windows with failed seals across forty openings. I identify the supply piping at each water heater, document every HVAC unit separately with its own age, and fly the roof for the missing shakes and lifted flashing you cannot see from the driveway.

Teardown rebuilds and condominiums

New construction here is low volume, about 6 percent of the city built in the 2010s, and it is mostly a mid-century house coming down and a much larger home going up on the same wooded acre, plus condominium communities across the township. On a rebuild I verify that the water service and lateral were replaced with the house rather than reused, check whether a septic system was sized for the new bedroom count, and look at how the builder handled drainage where the neighbors’ grades were set decades ago. Homes from this era commonly show high-efficiency furnace venting and condensate mistakes, missing kick-out flashing, and unfinished punch lists; a pre-drywall inspection while the framing is open catches the most. Condominium inspections cover the inside of your unit and flag the common elements, starting at $375.

Oakland County is EPA Radon Zone 2, and roughly 30 percent of tested homes in the county come back above the 4.0 pCi/L action level, per EGLE. Glacial soils, walkout basements, and mid-century slab-on-grade homes with radiant heat all move soil gas differently, and none of them can be predicted from the street. I treat radon as part of the inspection here: a 48-hour continuous-monitor test in the lowest livable level, $175 added to your inspection or bundled into the $749 Complete Inspection. On a slab house the lowest livable level is the main floor, and the test is just as valid there.