Kansas 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.

Kansas issues no home inspector license, certificate or registration, and neither does any Kansas city. The state's own index of what requires registration, licensing or a permit, published by the Kansas Business Center One Stop, runs alphabetically from accountants to well water contractors and names the boards of accountancy, barbering, cosmetology, healing arts, mortuary arts, nursing, pharmacy and technical professions, the behavioral sciences regulatory board, the departments of agriculture, commerce, health and environment, labor and revenue, the insurance department, the bank commissioner, the secretary of state and the attorney general. There is no home inspector on it. Kansas came closer to licensing this trade than most states that now license nobody. The Kansas home inspectors registration board was established in 2008, and from January 1, 2010 every individual performing a home inspection had to be registered by it; the board had five governor-appointed members, three of them inspectors with at least five years in practice and a thousand fee-paid inspections behind them, and registrants had to be at least eighteen, to hold a high school diploma or equivalent unless already in practice, and to show general liability insurance. The whole article carried a sunset and expired on July 1, 2013. Nothing replaced it, so a Kansas registered home inspector credential has not existed for more than a decade, and an inspector arriving from another state has nothing to apply for, no examination to sit and nothing to transfer. Because Kansas 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 state. The municipal answer is the same. Kansas has no state construction contractor license at all, so cities and counties do that licensing, and those are the lists where a local inspector credential would appear if one existed: the Johnson County contractor licensing program, which serves the Kansas side of the Kansas City metropolitan area, issues Class A general, Class B building, Class C residential, and the Class D specialty licenses for electrical, fire protection, mechanical, plumbing, roofing, swimming pool and wood framing work, and nothing for inspectors; Overland Park's own directory of permits and licenses covers business and home-based business licenses, massage, pawnbrokers, precious metal dealers, taxis and car services, transient merchants, pools and spas, rental licensing, liquor, signs and special events, and nothing for inspectors; and Wichita's business license categories are adult entertainment, advertising, animals, cemeteries, entertainment, miscellaneous, lodging and residential, sales and services, security, special events, transportation and wells, again with nothing for inspectors. A general business license from the city or county clerk may still be needed simply to trade, and that is a business formality rather than a qualification. What binds a Kansas home inspector instead is the Kansas Consumer Protection Act. Section 50-626 provides that no supplier shall engage in any deceptive act or practice in connection with a consumer transaction, and lists as violations, whether or not any consumer was in fact misled, representing knowingly or with reason to know that services have characteristics, uses or benefits they do not have, that the supplier has a sponsorship, approval, status, affiliation or connection it does not have, or that services are of a particular standard, quality or grade when they materially differ; the willful use of exaggeration, falsehood, innuendo or ambiguity as to a material fact; the willful failure to state or the concealment of a material fact; and falsely stating that services, replacements or repairs are needed. An aggrieved consumer may sue for a declaratory judgment or an injunction and may recover the greater of damages or a civil penalty of up to $10,000 per violation, and the court may award attorney fees. Kansas has enacted no statutory standard of care for home inspectors since the 2013 expiration, so the written pre-inspection agreement and ordinary contract and negligence law set the duty owed. The adjacent credentials worth knowing are the roofing contractor registration, which the attorney general administers under the Kansas roofing registration act passed in 2013: no person may engage in the business of or act as a roofing contractor in Kansas without a valid registration certificate, and an unregistered roofing contractor cannot bring or maintain a claim in a Kansas court arising from that business, on pain of the same civil penalty. Alongside it sit the city and county contractor licenses for the trades that repair what a report finds, the Kansas State Board of Technical Professions licenses for architects, professional engineers, landscape architects, land surveyors and geologists, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment credentials for asbestos and lead work, and the real estate broker and appraiser licenses for the rest of the transaction.