Don't ever buy in a HOA area! That is the nightmare you describe.
No HOA in our neighborhood, so while all the houses were the same shade of beige with the same lawn when the developer built the area, over the years as people have repainted and redone yards it has become wonderfully colorful with each house having unique character.
The only logical reason for this I can see is people being terrified they'll lose 50k because their neighbours paint their house black and let the lawn turn to scrub.
Weirdly you can do what you want outside of that. So I can't build a turret on my house. But I could paint it pink and replace my front lawn with cactuses or cover it in junk cars.
No one can make me do anything to make it look nice. But I'm stopped from doing much to make it bigger or look better than the neighbours.
There are "listed" buildings (where you cannot change almost anything). But they're rare and you know you're buying Shakespeares cottage and gave to keep it exactly as is. And in a lot of areas you need permission to cut down trees over a certain size.
Owning makes you responsible for things beyond your control. If the factory in your town closes, you're underwater no matter how smart you were about picking it or diligent you were about maintaining the house.
Similarly you can't really do what you want with it. You better keep it cream and beige coloured! And that's all you can buy. No one builds small homes or castles. Just identical units. Everyone must have a lawn, it must be one of three shades of green and cut correctly etc.
It also forces you to care about things you don't really care about: you have no problem with minorities living next door, but what if it effects your house price? The same for infrastructure your town needs. You know we need a free medical clinic but what if poor people hang around when you're showing the place?
It has the same effect on services: tax rates MUST be lowered because you can see them before buying. Internet speed is irrelevant because no one knows how bad it is until they move in. So no one has workable internet. Americans schools are famously underfunded for this reason too.
It gives you a big incentive to veto all future housing development too. That's given us a very big housing shortages in many places.
The ownership model also makes people much less mobile, limiting their income and productivity, not to mention cementing inequality and effecting nation gdp etc.