Colorado 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.

Colorado issues no home inspector license, certificate or registration. The Division of Professions and Occupations publishes the full list of occupational credentials the state does issue, covering certified public accountants and accounting firms; architects, professional engineers, land surveyors and their interns; barbers, cosmetologists, estheticians, hair stylists, nail technicians and shops; combative sports; electrical apprentices, residential wiremen, journeyman electricians, master electricians, photovoltaic installers and electrical contractors; landscape architects; nontransplant tissue banks; outfitters; passenger tramways; apprentice, residential, journeyworker and master plumbers and plumbing contractors; and radon measurement and mitigation professionals. Home inspection is not on that list. The General Assembly looked at changing this in 2017: Senate Bill 17-038 would have made it unlawful to act as a home inspector without first registering with the Department of Regulatory Agencies, but the Senate Finance Committee postponed the bill indefinitely on February 9, 2017 and no home inspector practice act has been enacted since. An inspector arriving from another state therefore has no Colorado credential to apply for, no examination to sit and nothing to transfer, and because Colorado holds no home inspector examination the National Home Inspector Examination has nothing to stand in for here; any "certified" designation an inspector advertises comes from a private trade association rather than from the state. What governs the work instead is general law plus the licenses that overlap it: the Colorado Consumer Protection Act, C.R.S. sections 6-1-101 and following, makes it a deceptive trade practice to knowingly or recklessly misrepresent the characteristics, uses or benefits of a service or to represent that a service is of a standard or quality it is not, and gives an injured consumer a civil action; the written inspection agreement and ordinary contract and negligence law set the duty owed, because Colorado has enacted no statutory standard of care for home inspectors; and since July 1, 2022 anyone conducting radon measurement or radon mitigation in Colorado must hold a radon measurement or radon mitigation professional license from the division under the Radon Measurement and Mitigation Licensing Act, so an inspector cannot add a radon test to the job without one. Any electrical or plumbing repair that comes out of a report has to be done by a Colorado-licensed electrician or plumber, and the one place Colorado law names this trade at all is section 12-10-218, which counts "home inspection services" as a settlement service and regulates the real estate broker's affiliated business arrangements, disclosures and referral fees rather than the inspector.