Idaho 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.

Idaho issues no home inspector license, certificate or registration. The Division of Occupational and Professional Licenses publishes the full roster of what the state does regulate: in building, construction and real estate, architects and landscape architects, the building code program, contractors, damage prevention, drinking water and wastewater professionals, electrical, the elevator program, factory built structures, geologists, the HVAC board, industrial safety, liquefied petroleum gas safety, logging safety, plumbing, professional engineers and land surveyors, public works contractors, real estate appraisers and the Real Estate Commission; alongside nineteen health professions and a further fourteen occupational licenses from accountancy and acupuncture through morticians, outfitters and guides, shorthand reporters and social work. Home inspection is on none of those lists. Two Idaho credentials are close enough to be mistaken for one, and neither is. The first is contractor registration: under the Idaho Contractor Registration Act it is unlawful to engage in the business of, or hold yourself out as, a contractor without registering, but a contractor is defined by performing construction, meaning building, altering, repairing, adding to, moving, excavating, wrecking or demolishing, and examining a house and writing a report is none of that. The registration is also not an examined credential; the application asks for proof of worker's compensation coverage, a general liability policy of at least $300,000 single limit covering construction operations, a statement of the type of construction undertaken and a fee the statute caps at $150 a year, and the chapter provides for no examination, no experience and no education at all. The second is section 39-4108 of the Idaho Building Code Act, which requires state and local government building inspectors to hold an International Code Council building inspector or plans examiner certification. That is a condition of public employment in code enforcement, issued by a private code body rather than by Idaho, and it says nothing about a private inspector working for a buyer. Idaho's universal licensure statutes do not help either, and it is worth knowing why. Section 67-9409 requires a licensing authority to set up a route for someone holding a current, valid and unrestricted license in another state, and section 67-9414 adds a route for four years of experience earned where the occupation was unlicensed, but both run through an Idaho licensing authority for the occupation, and there is none for home inspection. An inspector arriving from another state therefore has nothing to apply for, nothing to transfer and no examination to sit, and because Idaho 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 an Idaho home inspector instead is general law. The Idaho Consumer Protection Act makes it unlawful, where a person knows or in the exercise of due care should know, to cause a likelihood of confusion about the approval or certification of a service, to represent that a person has qualifications or a license that he does not have, or to represent that a service is of a standard, quality or grade it is not; a buyer who suffers an ascertainable loss may void the agreement or sue for actual damages or $1,000, whichever is greater, with restitution, an injunction and discretionary punitive damages, and an elderly or disabled buyer may recover an enhanced penalty of $15,000 or treble damages. Idaho 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. One Idaho statute does give the inspection report a defined role: under section 55-2511 of the Property Condition Disclosure Act, delivering a report or opinion prepared by someone hired to inspect the property in connection with the proposed sale is enough to relieve the seller of liability for disclosure information outside the seller's personal knowledge, and the expert who writes it may state in writing which required disclosures the information covers and is then responsible for nothing beyond those items. The adjacent credentials an Idaho inspector is most likely to need alongside are the contractor registration for any repair work, the electrical, plumbing and HVAC credentials for the trades that fix what a report finds, the Public Works Contractors License Board's examined license for public works, and the professional engineer, architect, real estate appraiser and real estate licenses for the neighboring professional opinions.