District of Columbia to Connecticut: home inspector license reciprocity

Connecticut licenses home inspectors statewide through the Department of Consumer Protection under chapter 400f of the General Statutes, advised by an eight-member Home Inspection Licensing Board that sits inside the department. No one may examine and report on two or more systems of a one-to-four-family residential building for a fee without that license, although the statute leaves licensed architects and professional engineers outside the chapter altogether and lets electricians, plumbers, appraisers, insurance adjusters and other license holders keep working inside their own credentials. Connecticut reaches the license through a real two-stage route. A candidate first earns a Home Inspector Intern permit, which asks for a high school diploma or equivalent, a completed board-approved Home Inspection Intern Training Program of at least forty hours covering general home inspection, Connecticut license law, specialized practice areas and business law, and a named Connecticut-licensed supervisor who has agreed to supervise. The intern then performs at least one hundred inspections, the first ten with the supervisor present on site for the whole inspection and countersigning every document, keeps a signed log of them, and passes the licensing examination. The intern permit is a training credential rather than a second destination, so the full Home Inspector license is what an experienced inspector moving to Connecticut applies for, and section 20-492c lets that inspector skip the intern stage: on a written application and a $100 fee the department issues a license to anyone holding a valid license from another state whose standards it finds substantially equivalent to or exceeding Connecticut's. Either the Connecticut state examination or the National Home Inspector Examination satisfies the examination requirement, and the department's testing contractor is PSI. Connecticut requires no errors and omissions cover, no general liability cover and no bond from home inspectors, and it runs no guaranty fund for them: the department's Home Improvement, New Home Construction, Real Estate and Health Club funds cover other credential holders. Licenses expire on June 30 of odd-numbered years, renewal costs $250, and 20 continuing education hours are due each two-year cycle.

The District of Columbia issues no home inspector license, certificate or registration, so an inspector moving here has no District credential to apply for, no examination to sit and nothing to transfer from another state. The Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection publishes the full list of occupational and professional licenses it issues through its seven boards, two commissions and three programs - architects, interior designers and landscape architects; athlete agents; barbers, cosmetologists, estheticians and body artists; combat sports; certified public accountants; funeral directors; the industrial trades; professional engineers and land surveyors; real estate brokers, salespersons and property managers; real estate appraisers; private detectives, security officers and special police officers; and tour guides - and home inspector is not among them. It is not a business license activity either: the Contractor and Construction Services category carries exactly two activities, General Contractor/Construction Manager and Home Improvement Contractor, and the District's full list of licensed business activities contains no home inspection entry. What an inspector does need is an ordinary business license, because D.C. Code section 47-2851.02 requires any person doing business in the District to maintain a Basic Business License, and work that is not separately enumerated is licensed under the General Sales and Services category as a General Business - $99 for a two-year term or $198 for four years, with no examination, no education or experience requirement and no professional board behind it. What binds a District home inspector instead is general consumer law. The Consumer Protection Procedures Act makes it unlawful, whether or not any consumer is in fact misled or damaged, to represent that a service has characteristics, benefits, a certification or an approval it does not have, to claim a status or affiliation the person does not hold, to misrepresent a material fact that tends to mislead, to fail to state a material fact if the failure tends to mislead, to use innuendo or ambiguity about a material fact, or to falsely state that repairs are needed; and section 28-3905(k) lets a consumer sue in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia for treble damages or $1,500 per violation, whichever is greater, plus reasonable attorney's fees, punitive damages and an injunction. The District has enacted no home inspector practice act - no statutory standard of care, and no conflict-of-interest rule of the kind that bars inspecting a property you were paid to repair - so the written inspection agreement together with contract and negligence law sets the duty owed. Because the District 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 District; the one place District law uses the phrase is section 42-2602.01, which lets a Home Purchase Assistance Program buyer receive a grant of up to $25,000 for repairs "identified by a certified home inspector in writing" without saying who does the certifying. The District does license the work on either side of an inspection: the Board of Industrial Trades licenses plumbers and gasfitters, electricians, refrigeration and air conditioning mechanics, steam and operating engineers, asbestos workers and the elevator trades, so a repair that comes out of a report belongs to one of them; building, remodeling and home improvement work needs a Basic Business License with a General Contractor/Construction Manager or Home Improvement Contractor endorsement; and putting a value on the property is the work of the Board of Real Estate Appraisers rather than the inspector.