By the way, Mr. Carona said Dallas was now number four in most traffic congested city, behind LA, NYC and Chicago. I thought Houston was worse but it’s number five. And it’s just going to get worse because there is no money for new road construction, and of course all that congestion will be more clogged with the influx of transplants we are getting. So yes, move to Dallas because we have great real estate bargains, but be prepared to get stuck in traffic and never see your house. Mr. Carona said our traffic makes school children cry: apparently a truck hauling the set for a school play was so detained on I-35 to Waco, they had to cancel or reschedule the whole play. Children were disappointed; they cried. (Well, boo hoo: what if the horses had tripped or the coach had been stopped by the Indians during frontier days? I all but missed a speaking engagement to the Home Builders Association of North Texas when that truck flipped over on the Dallas North and southbound tollway. And when I was a child…)

No doubt, we do have to get a grip on transportation in this state if we want sustained economic growth and decent air quality. What do we not want? California. By 2003, said Carona, more than 200% of the growth in population will be in McKinney, Killen, Fort Worth and Round Rock. And all those folks will be driving.

I had to ask about Home Owner Association powers, since one of my weekly chants is that “I Hate Homeowner Associations.” That coupled with the recent fiasco of a Frisco HOA foreclosing on a deployed soldier’s home got me all steamed up. Mr. Carona, who serves as president of a huge national realty ($400 million revenue producing) property management firm, says no we should not change the law about HOA’s in Texas, but maybe tweak them. When you sign for your mortgage, he said, you also sign and legally agree to be a part of the homeowner’s association. That’s fair — you are duly warned and don’t have to buy the property if you don’t like the association’s terms (my words). Buyers, read carefully. Seek counsel. He also made an excellent point: if homeowners don’t pay their share of home association dues, it becomes a hardship on OTHER home owners in the neighborhood.

Am I getting soft on HOA’s? Maybe.

But he said he did have a few ideas, maybe some tweaks, and we are going to talk about them. Basically, he said, HOAs do not want to be in the business of foreclosing on properties and selling the homes. If the home is not free and clear of mortgage debt, they cannot. And scofflaw homeowners get six months to pay up, he said.

I’m interested to hear what he has to say.