Minnesota 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.

Minnesota issues no statewide home inspector license, so there is no state credential to apply for, no state examination and nothing to transfer from another state, and a buyer's home inspection can be performed anywhere in Minnesota by anyone. Chapter 326B of the statutes carries every construction credential the Department of Labor and Industry issues — the state building code and its building officials and construction code inspectors, elevators, electrical, plumbing, water conditioning, high pressure piping, boilers, contractor registration, and the residential trades licenses for residential building contractors, remodelers, roofers and manufactured home installers — and no section of it creates a home inspector license; a 2006 bill that would have added one was not enacted. Where a credential does exist it is issued by a city, not by the state: Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Bloomington each require a pre-sale evaluation of the home before it can be marketed, and each will accept that evaluation only from an evaluator it has licensed itself. Saint Paul's license is the demanding one and it is the one place in Minnesota where the National Home Inspector Examination counts: an applicant must already hold a passed NHIE before being admitted to the city's own written test, then pass a practical evaluation of a test house, carry insurance and pay an annual license fee. What binds an inspector doing ordinary unlicensed work is general law: the Prevention of Consumer Fraud Act makes unlawful any fraud, unfair or unconscionable practice, false promise, misrepresentation or deceptive practice in connection with the sale of merchandise, which the statute defines to include services, and Minn. Stat. section 8.31, subdivision 3a lets an injured person sue for damages, costs, investigation costs, reasonable attorney's fees and equitable relief. Beyond that it is the written pre-inspection agreement and ordinary contract and negligence law that set the duty owed, because Minnesota has enacted no statutory standard of care for home inspectors and no statute governing the content or form of a private inspection report. Two adjacent credentials matter in practice. Radon is licensed: since January 1, 2019 the Minnesota Radon Licensing Act has required an annual license from the commissioner of health for anyone who tests for radon for compensation, as a measurement professional, and separately for mitigation professionals, mitigation companies and analysis laboratories, so an inspector cannot add a radon test to the job without one. And any repair, remodeling or roofing work that comes out of a report belongs to a licensed residential building contractor, remodeler or roofer under chapter 326B, or to the state's licensed electrical, plumbing, mechanical and high pressure piping trades.