It's kind of hard to buy anything modern that isn't under an HOA

New developments are more likely to be HOAs, as city governments realized that they can't afford the money bomb that is car-based infrastructure to support single-family housing. So they foist those duties onto the HOAs, essentially making small municipal governments for every new housing development.

So.... you can avoid them for now, but only if you live in developed cities.

It's not an easy decision for a lot of people. I struggled to buy a house for 10 years, partly because HOAs are the name of the game in most areas in the US. One time we got all the way to due diligence when we found out that we couldn't even hang our clothes outside on a clothesline! So we said no. That was five years in to the search, and it was another five years before we finally found something.

But, that was ten wasted years of my life, and I can understand someone making a different decision than I did. Hell, I wish WE had made a different decision!

HOAs are a mixed bag. Many are awful, but deed restrictions can also be beneficial if the rules are reasonable and the buyers are aware of them. This is especially true if you live outside of a City and don't have code enforcement.

My parents now live in the county without an HOA, and the neighboring property is an abandoned collapsed house full of trash and surrounded by decades of dead brush. It's a massive fire hazard that's full of pests..

On the flip side, their old HOA when they lived in the suburbs when I was younger freaked out if we did an oil change on our cars or had the wrong color paint on our window trim.

There isn't choice in a lot of places. Every new development since at least the 90s has an hoa.

I can understand it for condos where you functionally own an apartment, that way it can pay for building/grounds maintenance, but if you've got a street where none of the houses are connected, then I dont see a point, there's no benefit beyond everyone's grass looking pretty uniform and no one having outlandish holiday decorations (which, where's the fun in that). Actually now that I think about, I'm setting up an HOA who's only rule is you can't put up Christmas decor before Thanksgiving.

I'm an old guy, and got my entire life I've said the same. When buying the two prior houses, no HOA was a hard requirement. But my wife and I split up later year - had to sell the house and split the money. She moved away, but I wanted to stay in the area where my friends and family are. So what I could afford was a condo, and all condos have HOAs.

Mine actually seems fine so far. I almost wish they enforced the rules more, but none of the rules seem egregious. And since the neighborhood/complex has common facilities like a pool and a meeting room, it's kind of unavoidable having some common body to be responsible for them.

For the greater good.

For the same reason people choose to pay 50 % of their income to their landlord.

“Small government” people want “freedom” so they eschew normal things like bylaws, but then the problems with that appear - whether it’s legitimate or Karen - and the control freaks in the neighborhood form up a HOA to deal with it, instead of offloading it to a (theoretically) uninvolved third party.

And now it’s the default way to enforce community standards.

Very, very basic people who are more concerned with their property values than having a hobby.