Every time someone online complains loudly about an HOA, here is why people still choose to live in neighborhoods with HOAs.

I'm gonna disagree with this one. People chose to put uo with HOAs because 1) most new developments have them 2) SFH w/ HOA are more expensive

For every HOA that gets a Reddit post complaining about unreasonable behavior, there's a dozen others that just effectively keep people from turning their front yard into a wrecking yard, and probably a hundred others that don't enforce anything at all but just keep the common areas mowed.

> enforce anything at all but just keep the common areas mowed.

HOA style Large grass areas and office park landscaping mcdonaldifies America and is a travesty for the environment and water use.

Select grass areas for actual usage are okay but HOAs default to grass everywhere and bland non-native landscaping. And beige everything.

I have 113 potions. 100 are just Gatorade in a fancy bottle, 12 de-age you by a year, and the last one turns you into a vegetable forever. Should I be allowed to give people one at random to drink?

My county has laws about turning your front yard into a wrecking yard...def should look into it if you experience severely unmaintained yards or overloaded with trash with unmovable cars.

But whether I cut my grass every 2 weeks or every 3 weeks, or god forbird I decide to have a vegetable garden on the southern side of my house (covenance says must be backyard)...that's HOA realm.

The associations are also often mismanaged horribly, lead by people that just want to use their power to get the changes they want to their property, and sometimes (this is not rare) the board will use lawyers to write letters coercing behavior which may be against the HoA constitution, also sometimes to save a buck they will operate based on policy which was voted by the board that is unconstitutional and has not been amended by owners. The only way to rectify this is to put your real life on hold and create a political movement against the board and/or hire attorneys to get them to settle, litigate, or start a class suit, which might I remind you will probably retaliate against you and waste more of your time. Meanwhile the HoA's liability insurance premiums will go through the roof from hiring attorneys to defend themselves and so will your HoA fees.

Have heard about this from friends and family more than once.. it would be comical if it didn't impede their ability to live so much.

You may as well be renting from them. No, thanks!

One of the problems is that you don't know what you're buying. You might end up with a reasonable HOA or a terrible one. Even if it looks reasonable today, it might change tomorrow.

Another problem is that HOAs are the worst possible size of a government. They're large enough that you're in the minority, but small enough that they don't have anything else to preoccupy themselves with but how you're using your own property.

I've heard that "just imagine what kinds of horrors happen without HOAs" argument many times over, but... I live in the Bay Area in a densely-packed but older neighborhood without a HOA, and I'm yet to witness the terrible consequences of my neighbors' supposed recklessness. Yeah, the houses are painted in different colors and picket fences have different styles and heights, but I think I can live with that.

Most people are reasonable. When you bump into people who are truly unreasonable, a HOA is unlikely to save you. How peaceful and pretty a neighborhood is depends largely on socioeconomic factors (not just wealth, but also the prevalence of problems such as addiction). It just so happens that many new and expensive neighborhoods have HOAs, but that doesn't mean that HOAs are to be credited for good outcomes - or that they will be able to prevent the decline of such communities if the economic climate changes.

Specifically chose this neighborhood because there is no HOA. The goat/sheep/whatever was hilarious and was gone within a week. The point is that just because I don't live by an AirBnB (that I know of) doesn't mean I'm guaranteed to have no noise from neighbors. The renters before honestly did suck a lot, but if they wouldn't turn down their bass, and the cops couldn't be bothered to do anything about it, I doubt an HOA would have helped. I'd rather invest in quiet windows than live out the many many horror stories of my friends who live in HOAs.

>"The only way to attempt to improve the situation is show respect and hope it's eventually reciprocated."

With who? I don't have a neighbor, I have an endless string of rotating strangers. I understand that bad neighbors have always existed, but that's not what's happening in my specific situation.

Anyone and everyone has potential access to the house 30 feet or so from which I sleep. Anyone and everyone at any time. It's a big change.

This isn't the same thing as short term rentals thru AirBnB. Long term tenants are part of the rental market, not the hospitality market.