Michigan 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.

Michigan issues no home inspector license, certificate or registration, so an inspector moving here has no state credential to apply for, no examination to sit and nothing to transfer from another state. The Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs publishes both halves of its own list and home inspection is on neither: the Bureau of Professional Licensing's occupational professions are accountancy, appraisal management companies, real estate appraisers, architects, barbers, collection agencies, cosmetology, professional engineers, hearing aid dealers, landscape architects, personnel agencies, real estate brokers and salespersons and professional surveyors, while the Bureau of Construction Codes licenses "Boiler, Electrical, Elevator, Mechanical, Plumbing, Inspector/Plan Reviewer, Residential Builder". That "Inspector/Plan Reviewer" entry is the one thing on the list an inbound home inspector is likely to misread, and it is not a home inspector license: it is the Code Official registration covering Building, Electrical, Mechanical, Plumbing and Fire Protection System Inspector/Plan Reviewer and Building Official, granted under Article 10 of the Skilled Trades Regulation Act, where a building official is defined as "a construction code enforcement person" and an inspector as "the individual who is responsible for the administration and enforcement of the construction of buildings, structures, or appurtenances under the state construction code". It is registered with the State Construction Code Commission, renewed every third year on evidence of code-change training, and it exists to enforce the state construction code on permitted work, not to inspect a house for a buyer before a sale. Because Michigan 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. What binds a Michigan home inspector instead is general law: the Michigan Consumer Protection Act makes unlawful, at MCL 445.903(1), unfair, unconscionable or deceptive acts in trade or commerce, expressly including representing that services have characteristics, uses or benefits they do not have, representing that services are of a standard, quality or grade they are not, failing to reveal a material fact whose omission tends to mislead a consumer who could not reasonably know it, and causing a probability of confusion as to the certification of services, which is the provision that reaches an inspector who advertises a trade-association credential as though it were a state license. Beyond that it is the written pre-inspection agreement and ordinary contract and negligence law that set the duty owed, because Michigan has enacted no statutory standard of care for home inspectors and no statute governing the content or form of an inspection report. The one place Michigan law touches this trade is the Seller Disclosure Act: the statutory Seller's Disclosure Statement at MCL 565.957 tells the buyer in capitals that the buyer "SHOULD OBTAIN PROFESSIONAL ADVICE AND INSPECTIONS OF THE PROPERTY TO MORE FULLY DETERMINE THE CONDITION OF THE PROPERTY", and warns that the seller's statement "is not a substitute for any inspections or warranties the buyer may wish to obtain" — a statute that points buyers at inspectors without regulating them. The credentials to go to instead are Michigan's construction ones: any repair, alteration or improvement work that comes out of a report belongs to a licensed residential builder or maintenance and alteration contractor under Article 24 of the Occupational Code, or to the state's licensed electrical, plumbing, mechanical, boiler and elevator trades. Radon is not a credentialed add-on here either: the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy states that radon testers and mitigators "are not licensed or regulated in Michigan" and that it has no regulatory authority over them, recommending only National Radon Proficiency Program or National Radon Safety Board certification, so an inspector who offers radon testing in Michigan should check the rules of any neighboring state before working across the line.