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

Virginia licenses home inspectors statewide. The Virginia Board for Asbestos, Lead, and Home Inspectors sits inside the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation, and under 18VAC15-40-20 it is unlawful to perform a home inspection without its license, although someone inspecting only a single component or system of a residential building is not performing a home inspection and needs no license. There is one license grade and no trainee, associate or apprentice tier, so an experienced inspector arriving from another state applies for the same Licensed Home Inspector credential as everyone else. What Virginia adds instead of a junior tier is a specialty on top: the New Residential Structures (NRS) specialty, without which a licensee may not inspect a new residential structure or carry out any course-of-construction inspection. A new residential structure is one where record title has not yet passed to a purchaser and the purchaser has not taken possession, so the NRS specialty is what covers pre-closing and builder-warranty work on new homes; it is applied for on its own form, costs its own $80 fee, and rests on a board-approved training module of at least eight contact hours on the Virginia Residential Code taken within the previous two years. Every licensee must hold general liability insurance of at least $250,000 per occurrence, and the license runs for two years from the last day of the month in which it was issued.