Starting September 1st, new provincial regulations require that home inspectors must have provincial qualification certificates. Darcy McGregor, a home inspector for 26 years, is pleased. He is already certified, and teaches courses on home inspections at SAIT. McGregor is also listed with the Canadian Association.
McGregor has been lobbying for the province to adopt standards for quite a while now. Previous laws allowed anyone to be a home inspector, without proof that they knew what they were doing. He is please that now people will have to actually take required courses so they actually will know how to inspect a home properly. This past May, the province initiated the requirement that home inspectors be licensed and that they must follow standard, set procedures on inspections.
To get the license, applicants must complete a course and pass a test inspection. Inspectors must also put up a $10,000 security bond and provide a $1 million errors and omissions policy. This covers the homeowner in case of negligence or errors. Some owners of small home inspection businesses are not pleased with the change, and a few are finding the new requirements too costly.
Heather Klimchuk, who is the Service Alberta Minister, advises that those who don’t or can’t meet qualifications for training have the option of applying for conditional licensing, which will be in effect until March of 2013. That would allow ample time to get the proper training and licensing taken care of.