Wayne County property inspection, done by people who know the housing stock.

What makes Wayne County inspections different.

Wayne County has the oldest housing stock in Southeast Michigan by a wide margin — in Detroit itself, roughly 58% of homes were built before 1950, and several communities including Grosse Pointe Park and Hamtramck have more than 70% of their housing predating 1950. That history shows up in specific, predictable ways during an inspection: original knob-and-tube wiring that's since been partially updated (and partially not), lead service lines that weren't required to be documented when installed, plaster-and-lath walls instead of drywall, and — on the sewer side specifically — clay tile or Orangeburg pipe that's now well past its intended service life. None of this makes an older Wayne County home a bad buy. It does mean the inspection needs to actually know what it's looking at, not run a generic checklist built for a house half its age.

Detroit's building activity has also shifted differently than its suburbs — in 2023, only about 28% of the city's new residential permits were single-family, with the rest multi-family redevelopment. If you're evaluating a converted flat, a small multi-family, or a rehab in the city itself, that's a genuinely different inspection than a single-family homebuyer inspection in Livonia or Canton, and it gets treated as one.