Minnesota to North Dakota: home inspector license reciprocity

North Dakota does regulate home inspectors statewide, but as a registration rather than a license, and it is a short chapter. Under North Dakota Century Code chapter 43-54 the Secretary of State is the registrar, no individual may perform a home inspection for compensation unless registered, and doing so anyway is a class B misdemeanor. There is one grade of registration and no junior tier. The whole qualification is four lines of statute: be at least eighteen, file proof that you passed a home inspection examination offered by the American Society of Home Inspectors, the International Association of Certified Home Inspectors, the Examination Board of Professional Home Inspectors or the International Code Council, file proof of errors and omissions insurance of $100,000 or more covering all home inspection activities, and pay $200. North Dakota writes no examination of its own, sets no classroom hours, requires no supervised inspections or prior experience, and imposes no continuing education. It also adopts no statutory standards of practice and no code of ethics, so what an inspector owes a client comes from the written inspection agreement, ordinary contract and negligence law, and the state's consumer fraud chapter, which makes a deceptive act, misrepresentation or unconscionable practice in the sale of services unlawful and lets an injured consumer sue for up to treble damages and attorney's fees. Registrations all expire on 30 June, whenever they were issued. This is a different filing from the Secretary of State's contractor license, which is graded class A to D by the value of a single job above $4,000 and involves no examination at all; the trades that come out of an inspection report are licensed separately, electricians by the North Dakota State Electrical Board and plumbers by the North Dakota State Plumbing Board.

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.