California to Montana: home inspector license reciprocity

Montana licenses home inspectors statewide, and the license is new. Until the end of 2025 the state ran a home inspector registration; House Bill 225, enacted in the 2025 session, turned that registration into a license and wrote the qualifications into a new chapter of the Montana Code Annotated, Title 37, chapter 55. Since January 1, 2026 no one may practice home inspection in Montana without a home inspector license, and everyone who held an active registration on December 31, 2025 was converted to the new license automatically. The program sits in the Department of Labor & Industry's Business Standards Division and has no board of its own; it is one of the department's board-less licensing programs, alongside the boiler operator, crane and hoisting operator, fire protection and property management programs. There is only one grade of the credential, with no apprentice, associate or trainee tier, and the qualifications are short: forty hours of department-approved comprehensive home inspection instruction, membership in a national home inspection association, and at least $125,000 of errors and omissions liability insurance. Montana writes no examination at all, requires no continuing education, and charges $80 to apply and $80 to renew, with licenses renewing every two years. The association membership and the insurance are not one-time hurdles; state law requires both to be maintained for as long as the license is held. Chapter 55 also sets conduct rules that apply regardless of where an inspector trained: a written report is mandatory unless the client releases the inspector in writing, the report has to identify the systems inspected, any major visible defects and any recommendations for further evaluation, and an inspector may not take pay from more than one financially interested party without written approval from all of them, may not accept a commission or allowance from anyone associated with the client, and must promptly disclose any business interest or relationship that could affect the client.

California issues no home inspector license, certificate or registration, so an inspector moving here has no state credential to apply for, no examination to sit and nothing to transfer from another state. No board or bureau of the Department of Consumer Affairs regulates home inspectors, and there is no home inspector classification among the Contractors State License Board's A, B, B-2 and C classifications. What binds a California home inspector instead is the Home Inspectors chapter of the Business and Professions Code, sections 7195 through 7199: it defines a home inspection as a noninvasive physical examination performed for a fee in connection with the transfer of a residential dwelling of one to four units; it requires the inspector to work with "the degree of care that a reasonably prudent home inspector would exercise"; it makes it an unfair business practice to perform or offer, for an additional fee, repairs to a structure the inspector or the inspector's company reported on in the past 12 months, to inspect for a fee any property the inspector has a financial interest in, to offer a referral reward to the owner, broker or agent, or to take an engagement whose fee depends on the conclusions in the report; it forbids giving an opinion of valuation; and it makes void as contrary to public policy any contract term that waives that duty of care or limits the inspector's liability to the cost of the report. An action for breach of that duty must be brought within four years of the inspection. California does license the work on either side of the inspection, and section 7196.1 confirms the chapter exempts a home inspector from none of it: contractors through the Contractors State License Board, wood-destroying pests and organisms through the Structural Pest Control Board, where only a licensed Branch 3 (termite) field representative or operator may make the inspection and issue any statement about the presence or absence of those organisms, and architects, professional engineers and real estate appraisers through their own boards. Because California holds no home inspector examination, the National Home Inspector Examination has nothing to stand in for here, and any "certified" designation an inspector advertises comes from a private trade association rather than from the state; the Legislature names one such body, the California Real Estate Inspection Association, in section 7195.5, but only as a group the Department of Water Resources consults, not as a licensing authority.