What a general inspection misses in Margate
Single-storey slab houses with attic air handlers, so the two places worth reaching are the attic and behind the fitted furniture at exterior wall bases. In a house where the same family has been for thirty years, the second of those matters more than usual: furniture has not moved in a long time, and the surface behind a wardrobe that has stood against an exterior wall since the 1990s is the least ventilated surface in the building.
None of that is covered by the three inspections normally booked on a Florida purchase. A general home inspection surveys condition visually. A four-point inspection tells an insurer about the roof, the electrics, the plumbing and the cooling. A wind mitigation report is about how the building is fixed together. Not one of the three includes a moisture survey, an air sample or any laboratory work whatsoever, and that is the correct and honest limit of each of them rather than a criticism.
The most productive question on a pre-purchase inspection in this county is how long the property has been empty and what the thermostat has been set to. A vacant listing gets treated as a bill to minimise: cooling set high or switched off, so the system rarely runs and therefore rarely dehumidifies, through the six months from May to October that carry 71% of this coast's rainfall at dew points in the low seventies.
So the survey on a vacant Margate property is weighted differently. Closets, the backs of built-in storage, exterior wall bases behind where furniture stood, the air handler cabinet and the condensate termination take most of the time, and the humidity is read as found. We also record the thermostat setting on arrival, because on a closed-up house that single number explains a great deal of what follows. Everything is scheduled backwards from your inspection period, including two working days of laboratory time.
The commercial position in Margate is the one published on every page of this site, because the rate card is not a Fort Lauderdale rate card. A flat price by property size, agreed before anyone drives out, with the accredited laboratory fee already inside it. It does not rise if the samples come back positive, nothing is added for the drive, and we take no payment of any kind from anyone who removes mold.

What Margate itself changes
The buildings in Margate
Margate is a town of long-tenure owners in original houses: 77% owner-occupied across 26,356 units at a 1978 median, with 44% single-family detached. That combination produces a distinctive pattern. Where a rental market churns and forces periodic refurbishment, an owner-occupied 1970s house gets maintained rather than renewed, and maintenance concentrates on the things that stop working. Air conditioning stops working, so it gets replaced. Ductwork does not stop working in any way anybody notices, so it is still the original.
Where the water comes from
Ordinary central Broward conditions: no coast, no salt, a flat site and a shallow water table under the whole town. What distinguishes Margate on the water side is roof age rather than anything geographic. A 1978 house is on its second or third roof covering, and each replacement is a moment at which the interface between roof and wall, or roof and vent penetration, was either detailed properly or was not. Those details fail quietly, decades later, into a ceiling assembly.
The cooling systems here
The original duct system is the thing to examine in Margate. Fibrous duct board and flexible duct of the 1970s were made to a specification that assumed a service life shorter than the one they have had, and in a vented attic at Florida temperatures the insulation degrades, the vapour barrier splits and the inner liner absorbs. Where that liner has been wetted, it cannot be cleaned: the moisture is inside the material. That is a replacement rather than a cleaning, and a cleaning quote for it is money spent on the wrong job.