Kansas to Washington: home inspector license reciprocity

Washington licenses home inspectors statewide. The Department of Licensing issues the license and runs the program on the advice of the Home Inspector Advisory Licensing Board, and since 1 September 2009 nobody may act as, advertise as or hold themselves out as a home inspector in Washington without one. The Department puts it plainly: the license is needed by anyone who examines the condition of a home for a fee. It is worth being clear about how much more this is than Washington asks of the people who build the houses — construction contractors merely register with the Department of Labor and Industries under chapter 18.27 RCW, on an application that asks for a business identifier, workers' compensation coverage and the names of the principals but sets no examination and no coursework at all — while a home inspector must complete 120 classroom hours, do 40 hours of supervised field training and pass a two-part written examination. There is a single license grade with no apprentice, associate or trainee tier below it. Washington requires no insurance and no bond of a home inspector, but the law does bar the inspector, and anyone at the same company, from doing any work other than inspection-related consultation on a house for a year after the report. Licenses run two years and expire on the licensee's second birthday following issuance.

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.