Here we answer questions about getting a home or commercial inspection, give tips on home maintenance, and share our knowledge about common home and commercial property issues. We are here to help you. If you can’t find an answer to your questions here, you can always contact us via our contact page.
Downtown Lebanon looks great right now. Fresh paint. New signage. Restaurants, offices, boutiques moving into old storefronts around the Public Square. From the sidewalk, it feels like a comeback story — and in a lot of ways, it is. But here’s the part I have to be the bad guy
Rental properties in Cape Girardeau don’t usually fail all at once. They decline slowly, unit by unit, repair by repair, until deferred maintenance starts compounding in ways that aren’t obvious during a casual walkthrough. That’s especially true in older multi-unit properties near SEMO University, where turnover is high and repairs
Metal buildings dominate much of Southeast Missouri’s industrial footprint, especially along Nash Road and through the Sikeston Business Park. They’re efficient, fast to construct, and deceptively simple. But from an inspection standpoint, metal buildings hide some of the most expensive long-term failures I see — largely because the problems don’t
Fast growth leaves fingerprints, and nowhere is that more obvious than in Cape Girardeau’s expanding commercial corridors. Along Cape West Parkway and Siesta Drive, large retail and mixed-use buildings went up quickly to meet demand. Speed keeps projects on schedule, but it also creates predictable inspection problems once the doors
If I had a dollar for every time a commercial roof in West Tennessee “looked fine from the ground,” I wouldn’t be inspecting roofs anymore. Commercial roofs don’t usually fail because someone did one big thing wrong. They fail because our climate beats the hell out of them every single
When I review commercial inspection reports coming out of Southeast Missouri, especially from Cape Girardeau and Sikeston, the gap between a residential inspection mindset and a commercial one becomes obvious fast. A lot of investors cut their teeth on houses, then step into older retail or warehouse properties assuming the
Buying a single-family rental in Shelby County is one thing. Buying a multi-family property is something else entirely. When investors purchase apartment complexes in Memphis, they aren’t just buying units—they’re buying systems. And when those systems fail, they fail across multiple units at once. That’s where returns get eaten alive.
Industrial real estate doesn’t fail quietly. When commercial properties fail, they don’t do it with cosmetic cracks or peeling paint. They fail operationally—through roof leaks that shut down production, slabs that can’t support loading, or mechanical systems that collapse under sustained demand. And by the time those failures surface, the
Strip centers look simple. One roof. A row of storefronts. Big parking lot. From the outside, they feel like low-risk commercial buys — especially in a growing market like Elizabethtown. But after inspecting enough of them, I can tell you this: strip malls don’t fail like standalone buildings. They fail
Daycare centers and school facilities carry a different kind of weight than most commercial properties. These buildings aren’t just workplaces or revenue generators—they’re environments where children are entrusted to the building itself. That reality changes how inspections are approached and how risk is evaluated. At Upchurch Inspection, inspections of daycare
Auto repair and service buildings are some of the most deceptively risky commercial properties in the Mid-South. They often look straightforward—open bays, concrete floors, overhead doors, basic offices—but the way these buildings are used places continuous stress on structure, slabs, drainage, ventilation, and environmental controls. At Upchurch Inspection, inspections of
Unlike offices or apartments, storage units don’t have conditioned interiors buffering the building from the environment. Exterior walls, roofs, doors, and slabs are exposed to daily thermal swings, moisture cycles, and wind loads without much moderation. Inspectors pay close attention to: Small construction shortcuts that would be hidden inside a
