Moving to Minnesota as a home inspector: every state's rule
Minnesota does not issue a statewide home inspector license, so there is no reciprocity to speak of. Here is what that means in practice.
Minnesota home inspector · “Truth-in-Sale of Housing Evaluator”
Licensed by cities and counties
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.
How local licensing works in Minnesota
No Minnesota city licenses "home inspectors" as such, and no license of any kind is needed to perform a private buyer's home inspection anywhere in the state. What several Twin Cities municipalities license is the evaluator who performs the pre-sale housing evaluation their own ordinances make compulsory, and each license is good only in the city that issued it — there is no reciprocity between them and none of them substitutes for another. In Minneapolis the seller must schedule a Truth in Sale of Housing evaluation before the house is shown, must hire an evaluator licensed by the City, and must display the report at showings; the City licenses evaluators on a January-to-December year, requires a certificate of insurance to receive the license and 18 approved continuing education credits each year to keep it, holds evaluators to a published code of ethics, and can suspend or revoke a license for breaching it. Evaluations performed on an expired license or without current insurance are rejected and returned. The program and the evaluator's duties sit in Title 12 of the Minneapolis Code of Ordinances, chapter 248, alongside chapter 244 (maintenance code) and chapter 250 (condominium conversions). In Saint Paul the evaluation must be completed before the property is marketed, it covers single family homes, duplexes, condominiums and townhomes, and it may only be done by an evaluator licensed by the City. Saint Paul is the one Minnesota authority that uses the National Home Inspector Examination: an applicant must already have passed the NHIE before being admitted to the city's own process, which is a $200 application, a closed-book written test of roughly 100 questions with a 75 percent pass mark, and then a practical evaluation of a test house judged as though it were a real client's. Passing both parts only makes the applicant eligible; the license itself also requires proof of insurance and a $110 annual fee that is not pro-rated. The requirements sit in Saint Paul Legislative Code chapter 189, and failing to comply with that chapter is a misdemeanor. Bloomington runs the same idea under a different name: a Time-of-Sale housing inspection and evaluation report must be filed for every single and two-family dwelling, condominium, townhouse and mobile home offered for sale, and a seller may use a City inspector or an independent evaluator holding a City of Bloomington Time of Sale license. That license is issued by the City Clerk's Business Licensing office, requires a Minnesota or federal business tax identification number and proof of workers' compensation coverage or a stated exemption, and requires the building official to verify 18 continuing education credits every year before renewal, with suspension, revocation or a civil penalty for working without them. Other metropolitan cities operate comparable pre-sale evaluation programs, and some, such as Richfield, use their own staff inspectors rather than licensing private evaluators at all, so an inspector planning to work across the metro should check each city's own program before taking the work. Outside those programs no Minnesota city license is required to inspect a home.