After the north Atlanta ranch house listed by Realtor Joanne Mason went under contract, an inspector examined the property on the prospective buyers' behalf.

Nothing unusual about that —- except that the inspector was the father of one of the buyers.

What followed was a damning report that cited extensive structural problems with the house. The couple still wanted to buy it, but at a deep discount.

Mason and her client were stunned, and suspicious. So the seller hired his own inspector, an engineer. That report revealed something new —- the structural problems were made up.

"Everything this first man had said was fallacious," Mason recalled. "It was wrong. The seller could have been taken advantage of in a really bad way."

Georgia has been hands-off when it comes to setting standards for home inspectors. All the state requires is that the inspector produce a written report.

"Anybody can print a business card and call himself a home inspector," said Gary Duncan, operations manager for the Georgia Association of Home Inspectors.

That might be changing. Lawmakers recently passed legislation that would require home inspectors to pass a test to be licensed. The bill awaits Gov. Sonny Perdue's signature.

If the proposal becomes law, all home inspectors will have to be state licensed by 2010. Georgia would become the 25th state to require licensing or equivalent certification of home inspectors, according to the American Society of Home Inspectors.

"It's the only piece of a residential transaction that's not licensed by the state," said Rep. Sean Jerguson (R-Canton), the lead sponsor of House Bill 1217.

The bill would enlarge the Secretary of State's Office to include the newly formed Licensing Board of Home Inspectors. The six board members —- four home inspectors, a general contractor and a member of the public with no ties to home inspection —- would be appointed by the governor.

The board would establish standards of practice and a code of ethics, formulate a study course and choose an exam.

Unhappy consumers would have an ear for their complaints. Now, all they can do is appeal to the trade association the inspector belongs to, if he or she belongs to one.

The state would provide about $135,000 in startup funds, Jerguson said. After that, the licensing is supposed to be self-supporting, funded by inspectors' fees.

Home-inspector trade associations support the law because, they say, it would weed out shady businesses.

"I felt the general public needed protection," said Shannon Cory, a leading advocate of the legislation and past president of the Georgia chapter of the American Society of Home Inspectors. "Anybody that picks up a flashlight, buys a few tools and sends away for a correspondence course basically can pass himself off as a home inspector."

Jerguson and the four home-inspection trade groups operating in Georgia can only guess at how many people are doing inspections. The ballpark estimate is 2,000 to 2,500.

One telltale sign you've hired a home inspector with limited knowledge is a quote of about $150 and an inspection that takes under two hours, experts say.

Qualified inspectors typically charge in the $300 range —- it can go higher depending on the work involved —- and spend several hours poking around inside and outside a home, taking notes and sometimes pictures. A busy inspector might do 300 jobs a year.

Too often, the first question posed by a prospective home buyer is, what do you charge, Rich Hart of C.H.I. Home Inspections said.

He said the question should be: "Why should I trust you to do my home inspection? The assumption is we're all created equally and that's far from the truth."

Some inspectors conveniently also do repairs, which is considered an ethical no-no by reputable members of the profession.

Mike Polak, executive director of marketing and external affairs at Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah, assumed he had hired a competent inspector when he bought a house several years ago.

After Polak tried to sell the home, a prospective buyer's inspector found enough powder-post beetle and water damage to require months of repair work. The sale fell through and Polak was out $70,000 fixing the house.

He said the inspector he had hired when he bought the house should have noticed the beginnings of what turned out to be a huge problem.

"His response was the damage was done subsequent to his inspection and he had detected everything," Polak, a former legislator, said. "I think he was believing he was doing the right thing. He just didn't have the expertise."