California to Utah: home inspector license reciprocity

Utah began licensing home inspectors in 2026, and it did it in an unusual way. House Bill 58 of the 2025 general session created a new license classification called Private Home Inspector, defined in statute as an individual who offers services to the public and examines residential dwellings and their components to identify potential issues associated with the sale or purchase of real property. The bill took effect on 1 January 2026 and the Division of Professional Licensing opened applications and began enforcing the requirement on 1 May 2026. The classification sits inside the division's existing Building Inspector program, next to the Combination Inspector and Limited Inspector licenses held by code officials, and is overseen by the Building Inspector Licensing Board. The unusual part is what Utah asks for. There is no state examination, no state-set education requirement, no experience threshold and no trainee tier. Instead the division requires a current and active national certificate from one of three named bodies - the American Society of Home Inspectors, the International Association of Certified Home Inspectors, or the International Code Council as a Residential Combination Inspector - and two insurance policies, general liability of $500,000 and errors and omissions of $500,000, each naming the division as certificate holder. Both the certification and the insurance have to be kept current for as long as the license is held, and letting either lapse is a disciplinary matter. Licenses in this program expire on 30 November of odd years. Utah effectively outsources the competence test to the certifying bodies and keeps the consumer protection for itself in the form of mandatory insurance and disciplinary jurisdiction.

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.