Pennsylvania 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.

Pennsylvania issues no home inspector license, certificate or registration. None of the 29 licensing boards at the Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs covers home inspectors, there is no state examination, no application and no fee, and so there is nothing for an inbound inspector to transfer a license into. What Pennsylvania does instead is unusual and it binds you from your first inspection: the Home Inspection Law, 68 Pa.C.S. sections 7501 through 7513, regulates home inspectors by statute without licensing them, and the closest thing to a credential in it is membership of a trade association. Under section 7506, the home inspection clause of an agreement of transfer must provide that the inspection be performed by a full member in good standing of a national home inspection association, working to that association's ethical standards and code of conduct or practice. Three alternatives satisfy that section: a person licensed or registered as a professional engineer, a person licensed or registered under the Architects Licensure Law, or a person supervised by a full member in good standing who takes responsibility for the report by signing it. The association itself has to qualify under section 7502: it must be not-for-profit and not a franchise, have members in more than ten states, admit full members only after they have performed or participated in more than 100 home inspections and passed a recognized or accredited home inspection examination, and require a code of conduct and continuing professional education as an ongoing condition of membership. Pennsylvania therefore leans on the association's entry examination and continuing education rather than writing its own, and the state neither administers nor names any examination of its own, so the National Home Inspector Examination has no state adoption here and counts only so far as an association counts it. Section 7509 is the other hard rule, and it applies to every home inspector with no threshold or exemption: you must carry errors and omissions insurance for home inspection work and general liability insurance of at least $100,000 per occurrence and $500,000 in the aggregate, with deductibles no higher than $2,500, and you must keep that coverage for at least one year after the last inspection report you deliver. Failing to carry it, or falsely representing yourself as a professional engineer, an architect or a full member in good standing, is a summary offense for a first offense and a third-degree misdemeanor after that. The rest of the chapter sets the standard of care by reference to national association standards of practice and codes of ethics, makes a home inspection a service under the Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law, forbids you to repair a structure your firm reported on in the previous 12 months except for radon or wood destroying insect remediation, forbids inspecting a property you have an undisclosed interest in, forbids referral kickbacks and contingent fees, voids any contract term limiting your liability for gross negligence or willful misconduct or waiving the chapter, prescribes what the written report must contain including four statements that must appear conspicuously, bars repair cost estimates except as a sourced range, and cuts off claims arising from a report one year after it is delivered. Pennsylvania does license the specialist work around a home inspection, and section 7503 confirms the Home Inspection Law exempts you from none of it: professional engineers, architects and certified real estate appraisers through their Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs boards, radon testing and mitigation through the Department of Environmental Protection under the Radon Certification Act, wood destroying insect work through the Department of Agriculture's pesticide applicator certification, and on-lot sewage work under the Sewage Facilities Act. Those are also the pieces the statute carves out of the definition of a home inspection, along with single-system inspections such as a roof or an electrical system alone. One credential that is easy to confuse with this and is not related: registration as a home improvement contractor with the Office of Attorney General under the Home Improvement Consumer Protection Act, which every contractor doing $5,000 or more of home improvements a year must hold, is a consumer registration for repair and remodeling work, is expressly not an approval of anyone's competency or skill, and neither authorizes nor is required for home inspections.