Banned is maybe too far, but why should we as a country allow people to have petty power over meaningless things their neighbors do? Could we ban HOAs from being included in house sales, and every time it's sold the new owners have to opt in?
For the most part, I'm wondering about this in the context of single family homes since for homes like condos, you could make the case that HOAs are useful for shared things like roofs and whatnot. Maybe limit mandatory HOA involvement to things like what's truly necessary and shared and not how tall your grass is?
Yes. When we bought our first house we were told the HOA was optional. The day after closing they showed up and told us we were part of it. We needed to start paying our dues, and we needed a copy of the rules. That was $140 for a photo copy of a photo copy of a photo copy at least 13 times over. It was totally illegible.
My elderly grand mother was visiting, so we moved our car to the visitor spot so she could be parked in front of the house. We were towed.
My car had a flat, we were towed because the car appeared to be abandoned.
Everything about it was a nightmare. Shortly before we moved we found out the president no longer lived in the area, and was embezzling. He was reelected after that was revealed to the rest if the neighborhood, but no one was allowed to see the votes.
Should have told them to kick rocks, when they showed up.
The problem is "we were told". If the real estate says something, tell them to include that in writing in the contract. If they don't, they lied.
There are a lot for things I wish 20 some year old me knew when we bought that house.
Luckily, I knew that already, but I was a bit older when I signed the contract.