Hawaii to New York: home inspector license reciprocity

New York licenses home inspectors statewide. The Department of State's Division of Licensing Services issues the license under Article 12-B of the Real Property Law, the home inspection professional licensing act, and the rules at 19 NYCRR Part 197, and no one may conduct a home inspection for compensation, or claim to be able to, without it. That is worth saying next to New York's contractor pages, because the two trades are opposites here: New York licenses no general or residential contractor at state level and leaves builders to New York City and other local departments, but home inspection is a single statewide credential with one standard and one examination. The license is personal and issued to an individual, and there is only one grade of it. No apprentice, associate or trainee tier exists, so an experienced inspector arriving from another state applies for exactly the license a New Yorker applies for. A home inspection is defined as observing and reporting in writing on the systems and components of a residential building of one to four dwelling units, and the statute expressly excludes inspecting for radon or pests. Architects and professional engineers regulated by New York, and code enforcement officials acting within their government employment, may perform home inspections without this license, although an architect or engineer who opens a home inspection business must hold it. Licenses run two years, every licensee files proof of general liability insurance with the Secretary of State and keeps it in force, and renewal depends on 24 hours of approved continuing education.

Hawaii issues no home inspector license, certificate or registration. The Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs licenses occupations through its Professional and Vocational Licensing Division, and the division publishes the full directory of what it issues: boards for accountancy, acupuncture, barbering and cosmetology, boxing, chiropractic, contractors, dentists and dental hygienists, electricians and plumbers, elevator mechanics, engineers, architects, surveyors and landscape architects, massage therapy, medicine and osteopathy, the motor vehicle industry, motor vehicle repair, naturopathic medicine, nursing, optometry, pest control, pharmacy, physical therapy, private detectives and guards, psychology, real estate, speech pathology and audiology and veterinary medicine; and programs for activity desks, appraisal management companies, athletic trainers, behavior analysts, cemeteries and pre-need funeral authorities, collection agencies, condominium property regimes, dispensing opticians, electrologists, employment agencies, hearing aid dealers and fitters, marriage and family therapists, mental health counselors, midwives, mixed martial arts contests, nurse aides, nursing home administrators, occupational therapy, port pilots, real estate appraisers, respiratory therapists, social workers, subdivisions, time shares, travel agencies, athlete agents and veterinary technicians. Home inspection is on neither list. The Legislature looked at adding it: Senate Bill 2403 of 2018 would have required licensure for home inspectors and established a board of home inspectors, but the Senate Housing Committee deferred the measure on February 13, 2018 and no home inspector practice act has been enacted since. An inspector arriving from another state therefore has no Hawaii credential to apply for, no examination to sit and nothing to transfer, and because Hawaii 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 binds a Hawaii home inspector instead is general law. Section 480-2 makes unfair or deceptive acts or practices in the conduct of any trade or commerce unlawful, and section 480-13 lets an injured consumer sue for the greater of $1,000 or threefold damages plus attorney's fees and costs, with a $5,000 floor where the consumer is an elder. The Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act at section 481A-3 separately reaches causing a likelihood of confusion about the approval or certification of a service, claiming a status or affiliation one does not have, and representing that a service is of a standard, quality or grade it is not. Hawaii has enacted no statutory standard of care for home inspectors, so the written inspection agreement and ordinary contract and negligence law set the duty owed, and the Regulated Industries Complaints Office takes complaints only about work a board actually licenses. Hawaii does regulate one inspection closely, and it is the one most often ordered alongside a home inspection. Under chapter 460J, identifying an infestation, inspecting a structure to identify one, and making inspection reports, recommendations, estimates or bids about it are all pest control, which no one may perform, offer or advertise for hire without a pest control license; the branches are Branch 1 fumigation, Branch 2 general pest and Branch 3 termite, each earned by examination. Section 460J-19 requires the written termite inspection report to be on the board's PC-9 form and to carry the date of inspection and the name of the inspector, the name and address of whoever ordered it, any party in interest due a certified copy, the address of the property, a general description of the building and the location of visible infestation, and it forbids guarantees or warranties on the report; section 460J-20 requires any later document expressing an opinion on the presence or absence of termites to refer back to that report. So the wood-destroying-pest part of a Hawaii pre-sale inspection is licensed work with a prescribed report form, even though the rest of the home inspection is unregulated. The other adjacent credentials are the Contractors License Board's general engineering, general building and specialty licenses under chapter 444, which define a contractor by the construction work performed rather than by examining and reporting on a building, so there is no inspector classification there, but every repair that comes out of a report belongs to a licensed contractor; alongside them sit the Board of Electricians and Plumbers, the Board of Engineers, Architects, Surveyors and Landscape Architects, the Real Estate Commission and the Real Estate Appraiser program.