Moving to North Dakota as a home inspector: every state's rule

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.