District of Columbia to Maryland: home inspector license reciprocity

Maryland licenses home inspectors statewide through the Maryland Commission of Real Estate Appraisers, Appraisal Management Companies and Home Inspectors, which sits in the Department of Labor's Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing and works under Title 16 of the Business Occupations and Professions Article and COMAR 09.36. There is one license and no junior tier: an applicant needs a high school diploma or its equivalent, 72 hours of an on-site classroom training course approved by the Commission and by a national home inspection organization, and a passing score on the National Home Inspector Examination, which PSI delivers in Baltimore, College Park, Hagerstown and Salisbury. Maryland sets no experience requirement and no supervised-inspection count, so an inbound inspector's years of practice are not what the file turns on. Before the license is issued the applicant must show general liability insurance of at least $150,000 with their own name on the certificate, and that cover has to be in place again at every renewal; there is no surety bond and no errors and omissions requirement. The Commission publishes a list of 28 states whose licensees may apply by reciprocity, which replaces the 72-hour course and the diploma evidence but not the examination, and it tells an applicant from any other state to file the original application instead. The Maryland Home Improvement Commission license that contractors hold is a separate credential under separate law and does not authorize home inspections.

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.