Moving to New Mexico as a home inspector: every state's rule

New Mexico licenses home inspectors through a full board of its own. The Home Inspectors Board sits in the Regulation and Licensing Department's Boards and Commissions Division alongside the accountancy, real estate and appraiser boards, and it operates under the Home Inspector Licensing Act, sections 61-24D-1 through 61-24D-16 of the New Mexico Statutes Annotated, with rules at 16.66 NMAC that were last rewritten effective 23 April 2024. The board's own position is blunt: it is illegal in New Mexico to inspect real estate for compensation without a license from the board. There is one grade of license and no trainee or associate tier. Building it from scratch takes 80 hours of classroom training across eleven named subjects, 80 hours of field training spent on at least 30 parallel inspections alongside an experienced inspector, a board-approved examination, fingerprints for a state and national background check, and proof of two separate insurance policies. New Mexico is one of the few states that requires both errors and omissions cover and professional liability cover, each at a minimum of $250,000, and it requires them to be carried at all times rather than only at application. The license runs three years and costs $250 to apply for plus $1,000 for the license itself, with renewal at $1,000 and 60 hours of continuing education per three-year cycle, at least six of them in ethics. Two features of New Mexico practice catch inspectors out. The standards of practice forbid a licensee from deciding, or writing in the report, whether anything inspected conforms to state or local building code. And a written pre-inspection agreement is mandatory before any inspection starts, naming the inspector and license number, the fee and payment terms, the scope of work, and a statement that the inspection follows the board's rules and standards of practice.