The GMAN wrote:
Some people think HOAs are the Antichrist but there’s a good reason they exist.
We had a nice enough yard/house/grass we almost won the little "of month" competition a few times........we left the HOA neighborhood because they were a bunch of Nazi douches. Basically bored retirees with nothing better to do than belittle folks. They started trying to institute rules about not being able to have guests street park on a public street in front of your own house for more than 24 hours.
We paid to have a lawyer send them a "STFU" letter after they approved a fence stain we did, then complained about it and wanted it replaced. This after them awarding the house, with new stain, in the top yards competition.
Now we live in a no-HOA area and are much happier. Your purchasing power can help determine your chances living somewhere without HOA's. And we don't have to submit 10 different forms to get a new mailbox or apply stain to something.
HOA's are a nice concept, but quite a few go way way way too far.
The home value thing is a lie too. Our current neighborhood, without HOA, sells at much higher price/sqft and price/acre than the old neighborhood did. Location and nearby perks matter more than how uniform you can make a neighborhood look.
Oh......and I researched it......HOA's in modern form were so corporate builders could maintain appearances during the build/sell phase of a community. Which makes perfect sense to protect their investment. Once a community is sold, often, the original super strict rules from the build/sell phases never get voted out and nobody changes the management company contracts.
I bothered to ask a builder once that was a friend in another area what was up with all the Nazism, and so he told me.