My wife doesn’t think living under the iron fist of a homeowners’ association would be a big deal. I disagree. You never know whether you’ll get normal people in charge, or mind-blowingly arrogant [insert derogatory term here]:

From Frisco, Tex., we get this from the Dallas Morning News:

Jim Greenwood said he never dreamed his HOA would have a problem with his new Ford F-150 pickup. Then he received the first of three notices threatening him with fines.

"Mr. Greenwood, you’re violating a subdivision rule that prohibits pickup trucks in your driveway," the notice reads.

Stonebriar HOA rules allow several luxury trucks on driveways, including the Cadillac Escalade, Chevy Avalanche, Honda Ridgeline and Lincoln Mark LT.

But most Ford, Dodge or Chevy pickups are restricted.

[snip]

Mr. Greenwood appealed, claiming his Ford F-150 isn’t much different from the Lincoln Mark LT.

"The response was: ‘It’s our belief that Lincoln markets to a different class of people,’ " he said.

(Oddly, the HOA allows Hummers — the epitome of low class, IMO. So go figure.)

The other day I saw a Papa John’s pizza-delivery car that had several partisan bumper stickers on it. That, I thought, is just stupid — you’re guaranteed to turn off a sizeable number of people who see it. Yes, the cars are owned by the employees and not the company, but you would think Papa John’s would have rules. At most newspapers, for example, reporters are forbidden to put such stickers on their cars.

When you’re associating your business with your vehicle, opinion-free is the way to go. Especially when times in Virginia are changing.

See, there are a lot of new voters signing up in Virginia. So points out a story in today’s Washington Post, which shows a pretty major jump especially in the northern and eastern parts of the state. (Login required or use BugMeNot.)

Since 2004, Virginia has added almost 250,000 voters; in contrast, Pennsylvania has added only about 45,000. And more are coming — 1,800 per week in Fairfax county, for example.

The political ramifications are obvious, of course: The new registrants are in predominantly Democratic regions, putting Virginia solidly in play for the election in November, especially considering the elections of Tim Kaine and Jim Webb, and with Democrat Mark Warner’s lead over Republican Jim Gilmore large and growing.

Many — but not all — of these new voters are recent transplants to Virginia. Others are old residents who are registering to vote for the first time. Either way, after November we may be looking at a very different commonwealth.

Not everyone gets the whole blogging thing or understands what makes a good blog post.

We suggested to one of our member service partners that it create a post we could put on the VARconvention.com blog. We thought that, it being a blog, we’d get something, well, blog-like.

That turned out not to be the case.

I can’t in good conscience put this up. I just can’t. So I hatched a plan. We asked the company, "Can we ask our bloggers and readers to improve it?" And the folks at Oakwood said, "Er… OK."

Here’s the "blog entry" they sent:

Oakwood Worldwide is the global leader and provider of furnished and serviced apartments. For one need or many, local or around the globe – Oakwood offers flexible, easy-to-use, custom solutions to meet any temporary housing need. A wide range of inventory and supplier management options allows Oakwood to provide the optimal housing solution whenever and wherever it’s needed – our clients decide and we deliver with reliability they can trust. With nearly 3,500 Oakwood associates worldwide, nearly 23,000 apartments, and more than 300 network partners to meet any need, we’ve got our clients covered. Our staff of trained professionals throughout the world, innovative technologies, and our unparalleled customer service have made Oakwood the premier choice in temporary housing solutions for nearly 50 years. For more information, please visit oakwood.com.

We need your help.

Fix it. Take a minute or two to edit to your heart’s content — or just tell us what would make you actually read a post from a company like this. Yes, it’s an ad. Help us make it an ad that works.

Why? Because if we can convince more people of what works and what doesn’t, we’ll all start seeing more readable (and more-readable) ads on the VAR sites.

Here’s a start:

"Got a client who’s waiting for a closing? Does he need a place to stay? That’s what we’re here for…"

I’ll give you three guesses.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

It’s Bob Carney, blogs extensively at FocusOnFrederick and is known to the Virginia REALTOR® Twitterazzi as simply GotBob. He’s from Frederick. No, not Fredericksburg, but Frederick. As in Frederick, Maryland.

I can hear it now, “Oh, great! VAR takes its convention to Baltimore, and now we have a contributor from Maryland on VARbuzz. Next thing ya know, those crazy varmints at VAR will be moving their offices to Annapolis!”

Hardly! Sure, the real estate profession has its nuances from state to state, but all REALTORS®, no matter where they work, encounter many of the same issues. And with Frederick located within the footprint of MRIS and the greater Washington DC market, Bob will have plenty of relevant perspectives to share with us Virginians.

Bob is an alumni of Virginia Real Estate Bloggercon 2.0 (yes, he braved a Potomac River crossing for it), an avid social media marketer, and you might even get to meet him at VAR’s Convention & Expo 2008 (leave lots of comments on his first post begging him to come).

Please show Bob some Virginia hospitality and welcome him as VARbuzz’s newest contributor!

Bill Burruss of Lynchburg suggested this one.

Looking at the effect of power lines on real estate, he wrote, "I asked a major appraiser, who has been an expert witness for APCO, about how these lines effect the price of real estate and he says that it has no effect." But Bill disagrees. What’s your take?

We’ve all seen plenty of home-inspection mishaps, sure, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to see another. This one comes courtesy of Darrell Hay in Seattle, who wrote about it for the Seattle Times.

It’s worth reading the full (short) article just for the ending.

Want more? There’s plenty.

And plenty more.

And still more.

And yet more. (Warning: First shot not for the overly squeamish.)

(Yes, I  know that means more people will click it, but that’s human nature for ya. For example, if I said "I really advise against trying to figure out what the homeowner did wrong in this picture," a number of you would anyway, then blame me for sending you there.) (I mean it — don’t go there. You don’t want to look at the picture.) (I mean it.)

For reasons I honestly can’t remember, I was browsing through some real-estate books and came upon this one, published in early 2006.

According to the publisher’s description, the book

…shows why the real estate market is poised to climb higher over the next decade–and explains what you can do to profit from it.

Lereah calls today’s market a "once-in-every-other generation opportunity." Today’s boom is not just driven by low interest rates–there are a host of demographic and economic reasons why real estate will continue to outpace other investments, from the growing needs of the baby-boomer generation and the rise of the "echo" boomer generation to the new ways real estate is marketed and sold.

And one review reads, "Today’s real estate markets are booming and Lereah makes a convincing case for why the real estate expansion will continue into the next decade."

The author of the review? Dewey Daane, former governor of the Federal Reserve Board Of Governors.

I believe the word I’m looking for is "Oops."

Eight great Budget Truck signs.

For those of you who get the latest VARbuzz via RSS and never see the home page, why not head over there now and vote in the new poll….

Unless you live in some kind of twisted mirror universe, where two or three minutes is a normal amount of time for a Web page to load, you may have noticed that VARbuzz has been a bit slow lately. (We realized it was bad when we started getting messages from the 1970s.)

Enough was enough. We’re switching hosting companies.

This means that both VARbuzz.com and VARconvention.com might act a bit wonky this week as the new-host information makes its way over the tubes of the Internets. You might see an old version, or no version, or… well, something unpredictable. This is the Internet, after all.

But we’ll be back at full strength by the end of the week. Till then, keep on truckin’.