Speaking of parking issues - there was a new community with a HOA selling new homes, and one of the bylaws was you couldn't own a truck - like any truck - including pickups. I found this out when some guy was trying to buy a home there and had everything lined out and ready to sign and he drove up to look at the house again in his new pickup truck and they just about had a cow. They told him to take the truck back to the dealer if he wanted to live there, he told them they need to write an exemption into his HOA agreement or he's not buying the house. That pissed off the house contractor so the HOA ended up writing him the exemption and he bought the house. Personally I would have spent my money elsewhere - not to mention you can't do that around here, it's hard to find people that don't own a truck.
Also, when I worked for Directv as a tech support consultant I often had calls from homeowners who had recently had Directv installed but never looked at their HOA paperwork and now wanted a tech to come back out (for free of course) to move the dish because the HOA doesn't allow dishes to be seen from the street view of the house. Our techs were supposed to ask before installing, and most did from what I know, but often the homeowner never knew it was in the HOA paperwork either. It was a pita for everyone involved, many people figure they bought a house and can do things to it and later find out the HOA requires they even get paint color approved before they can paint the front door.
