The hand of government has come down upon the home inspectors in the state of North Dakota. As it turns out, a buyer in the Bismarck area tried to sue a Bismarck home inspector for performing a poor inspection and not detecting mold issues with the property. The inspector did not have errors and omissions insurance, leaving the buyer empty handed. It appears the buyer had political connections that led them to Rep. Margaret Sitte of Bismarck. Rep. Sitte made an attempt to push through a licensing bill that would have put the home inspectors under the control of the state board of realtors. When I heard about this bill I checked into its content, only to find out that it was almost the exact same bill we tried to put through last legislative session. The only difference was the requirement for the inspectors to be controlled by the Realtors. The irony is, Rep. Sitte voted against this very version of licensing in the 2003 session and is now reintroducing it under her name. Something seems to get smelly here.
The inspectors of our state, with direction from Rep. Potter, tried to get a licensing bill through in the 2003 session that appealed to most of the inspectors. Not everyone agreed on everything but we struck common ground for most inspectors to feel happy that we were introducing the best product we could put our signature on before something would be forced upon us by the state, without our input. In the end that bill was defeated.
Two years later the bill is brought back to life by one of the Representatives that voted against it in the 2003 session. It was very disappointing to hear that only two inspectors had been contacted to consult on the bill and they were both the only two that were against the same bill two years earlier. Why does it keep getting so fishy smelling around here? After contacting the masses and letting more inspectors in on the process changes were made and the result is not something most are happy with but we were able to remove some detrimental aspects of the bill. The only requirement of the bill now is to obtain omissions and errors insurance and take a home inspectors exam. The NACHI test is included with the other exams, but with the NACHI test being included, the integrity of the bill is undermined, and essentially makes it worthless. The point of the bill should have been to try to provide quality inspectors before the inspection, not only to provide a safety net when an inspection goes wrong because of an unqualified inspector. This was something we could not get several law makers to fully comprehend. Now the consumers of our state are still left with the same problem Rep. Sitte was supposed to be trying to fix. There are no upfront assurances that the consumer is getting a baseline of expectation provided to them from a home inspector in North Dakota. The concerns of the buyer in Bismarck have not been addressed.
So we have made a baby step forward and will try over time to make this piece of legislation something worth while instead of just being a political football at the expense of an entire industry. Click on the scroll above to view the contents of the bill.
