Missouri to Nebraska: home inspector license reciprocity

Nebraska does not license home inspectors, but it does require them to register with the state, and that registration is mandatory rather than optional. Since January 1, 2023, sections 76-3601 to 76-3606 of the Nebraska Revised Statutes have made it unlawful to conduct a home inspection for compensation in Nebraska without first registering with the Secretary of State's Licensing Division, and a violation is a Class IV misdemeanor. The registration is an administrative filing, not a qualification: an applicant gives the name of the individual or legal entity, the address of the home office, an agent for service of process, and any national home inspection certification currently held, and files a $300 fee with a certificate of insurance showing at least $250,000 of general liability coverage that stays in force for the whole term. There is no examination, no required coursework, no experience threshold, no continuing education and no background check. National certification is disclosed if the inspector has it and is not required if the inspector does not. The registration runs two years, renewal may be filed in the 45 days before it expires, and any change to the registered information has to be reported within 45 calendar days. Because the whole scheme turns on filing rather than on qualifications, an inspector arriving with an out-of-state license is in exactly the same position as a Nebraska beginner: the license does not shorten anything, and nothing about it can be transferred. What Nebraska licenses instead sits around the edges of the job. The Department of Health and Human Services credentials asbestos, lead-based paint and radon work along with the registered environmental health specialist, so an inspector cannot bolt any of those services onto a home inspection without the matching credential, and the Department of Labor runs a separate statewide contractor registration tied to workers' compensation coverage that reaches anyone who also does work on someone else's real property.

Missouri 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 Division of Professional Registration publishes the full list of the professions Missouri does register, from certified public accountants, architects, professional engineers, land surveyors, landscape architects and interior designers through real estate agents, brokers and appraisers to private investigators, athlete agents and professional wrestlers, and home inspection is not on it; the only construction trade on the entire list is Electrical Contractors. Title XXII of the statutes, Occupations and Professions, tells the same story: its chapters run from 324 to 346 and none of them concerns home inspectors. The legislature has been asked to change this and has not: House Bill 1066 of 2019 would have added fourteen new sections to chapter 339 creating a Missouri home inspectors board, an apprentice tier and a statutory definition of home inspection as "the process by which a home inspector, for payment, visually examines the readily accessible systems and components of a residential building and describes such systems in writing", but chapter 339 today contains no section in the 339.900 to 339.939 range the bill would have created. No Missouri city fills the gap either. The cities that license occupations in this space license the building trades, not the people who inspect them: St. Louis runs boards of examiners for electrical, mechanical, plumbing and drainlaying, and sprinkler contractors, and Springfield certifies journeyman and master electricians, plumbers, mechanics and gas fitters. An inspection business may still need an ordinary local business license, such as the City of St. Louis graduated business license, but that is a revenue and business registration rather than a credential in this trade. Because Missouri 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 Missouri home inspector instead is general law: the Merchandising Practices Act, at RSMo 407.020, makes unlawful any deception, fraud, false pretense, false promise, misrepresentation, unfair practice or concealment, suppression or omission of a material fact in connection with the sale or advertisement of merchandise, which RSMo 407.010 defines to include services, and RSMo 407.025 gives a buyer who purchased primarily for personal, family or household purposes and suffered an ascertainable loss a civil action for damages, punitive damages, 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 Missouri has enacted no statutory standard of care for home inspectors and no statute governing the content or form of an inspection report. One practical boundary: any repair work that comes out of a report has to go to a Missouri-licensed electrical contractor or to whichever trade the city of the job licenses, and on radon the Department of Health and Senior Services only recommends, and does not require, a contractor certified by the National Radon Proficiency Program or the National Radon Safety Board.