Wyoming is one of West Michigan’s larger communities and one of its most consistently affordable, which means its housing works hard. Much of the stock is post-war: modest ranches and bungalows built for families in the 1950s and 1960s, with later additions and updates layered on by successive owners.
Affordable housing tends to carry deferred maintenance rather than neglect, and the two look different in a report. What we see most often in Wyoming is a house that has been kept going competently but cheaply: a furnace nursed past its sensible retirement, a roof with one layer too many, a service panel that has been extended to accommodate a finished basement, and DIY work that functions but was never permitted or inspected. None of that makes a house a bad buy. It does mean the difference between the asking price and the real cost of ownership deserves to be on paper before you commit.
Basement moisture is the other recurring theme, and it is usually a grading and downspout problem long before it is a foundation problem. That is good news, because the cheap fix comes first if you catch it.
Kent County sits in EPA Radon Zone 2, predicted average between 2 and 4 pCi/L, so we recommend a radon test with any Wyoming inspection.
We have conducted over 30 home inspections in Wyoming, Michigan, and here are some of the things we have commonly found.
Roofs: On average, the roofs we inspected in Wyoming were hipped roofs with an average remaining life span of five years. Roughly 20% of the homes inspected in Wyoming had gutters.
Plumbing: In Wyoming, over 50% of the homes we inspected had galvanized plumbing. Most water heaters we inspected were about 10 – 12 years old.
Electrical: Almost 100% of the homes we inspected in Wyoming had at least one or more open ground outlets. Less than 20% of the homes in Wyoming still had knob and tube wiring.
Foundation: Less than 20% of the homes we inspected in Wyoming had structural, foundation, or asbestos concerns.
HVAC: The average furnace we inspected in Wyoming was between 5-7 years old, and roughly 20% of homes we inspected had air conditioning.
