I’ve lived under an HOA regime but once, and will not do so again. When I bought that house I didn’t really know how these things work; now I do. What struck me most at the time - this is in Gwinnett County, Georgia - was the dearth of ordinary public goods outside of the HOAs: public pools, parks, sidewalks and paths, etc. Our neighbourhood rules were not awfully onerous - nothing that would rise to the level of Hallmark drama - but the poverty of local public goods (our little city of Bloomington offers much more, and very much more per capita) was not right.
When my wife and I went looking for our retirement home in 2019 we had a list of things we wanted, but the top item on the list as non-negotiable was NO HOA. We're pretty quiet people, and take good care of our property, but there's no way in hell we're letting the most anal-retentive person in the neighborhood tell us what to plant in our garden or tell us exactly where we have to store our trash cans.
I’ve lived under an HOA regime but once, and will not do so again. When I bought that house I didn’t really know how these things work; now I do. What struck me most at the time - this is in Gwinnett County, Georgia - was the dearth of ordinary public goods outside of the HOAs: public pools, parks, sidewalks and paths, etc. Our neighbourhood rules were not awfully onerous - nothing that would rise to the level of Hallmark drama - but the poverty of local public goods (our little city of Bloomington offers much more, and very much more per capita) was not right.
I kept my stay short
When my wife and I went looking for our retirement home in 2019 we had a list of things we wanted, but the top item on the list as non-negotiable was NO HOA. We're pretty quiet people, and take good care of our property, but there's no way in hell we're letting the most anal-retentive person in the neighborhood tell us what to plant in our garden or tell us exactly where we have to store our trash cans.