Id say the evidence is clear: if you want to truly own your home, don't buy in an HOA. If you want others to make decisions for you, dictate how your home will look, and monitor you like a police force, then choose an HOA.
Property tax?
I'm not here to extoll the joys of paying and dealing with an HOA, they can be a hassle - I know it.
However, consider the alternatives: Move out to unincorporated land, build your 5 acre dream home, swimming pools, tennis courts, etc. Watch as a dump and trailer park open next door...consider what your options are.
Plenty of incorporated land in the US without HOAs. While some parts of the country can't seem to exist without them, much of the country (including where you have really nice homes) do not have them. No trailer parks next door - they can't afford the land.
Of course financially they work out better than the alternatives, a bunch of volunteer obsessives straight out of Wikipedia is cheaper than an array of trained bureaucrats following due process.
Some people won't go near Wikipedia and HOAs. It's a quality of life issue as well. It starts with the architectural regulations, which are always 10 years behind the current fashion, and continues with the position of your basketball hoop. You hear the HOA apologists talk as if towns didn't manage to get on top of nuisance properties.
HOA. All the oppression of government, and none of the due process.
You should know: When you say something is self-evident, you will be called out on it.
>HOA's exist because they work out financially better than the alternatives.
Definitely not self-evident. I've talked to real estate agents who do not agree that it affects house values. My neighborhood has no HOA. Lots of non-ideal lawns her. One block south of us they do have an HOA. Very neat lawns, and houses all properly painted. Those houses do not sell for more.
Perhaps it does impact the price of the house, but I'd wager it is a miniscule effect compared to all other factors (size, neighborhood amenities, schools, etc).
I find that most people who make the claim about property values use it as a post-hoc justification to wanting to enforce a certain aesthetic on others.
Point being, the impact on a $200K house may be negligible if its HOA or not - however once you move into >$1M home values they would be almost exclusively HOA. This is the self-evident part of the argument.
What percentage of HOA's are for >$1M houses? A small minority.
In my town, all the >$1M houses on sale right now have no HOA, BTW.
It wouldn't surprise me if nationally, HOAs are more correlated at the middle price range. Around 1 M most people don't like being told what to do. At the next level, sure, they probably exist just to pay for fancy country clubs or something.
HOA's exist because they work out financially better than the alternatives. HOA's may not be for you, but for those that like higher property values, they are an acceptable trade-off.