I have found that HOAs can attract the domineering power hungry types. We were lucky not to have any in our subdivision, which had an annual HOA of $175 to cover the landscaping needs in the common areas. They had problems getting anyone to "run" for the committee. I never did, didn't care.
I haven't dealt with HOAs personally, but my friends that have - theirs are like this. They wouldn't let my friend paint her front door the color she wanted. WTF is that???
Like I said, it can be a mix. When I lived in Atlanta (Marietta, actually), we had a pretty chill HOA. But when elections came around, it was well-understood that one guy who kept trying to get on the board was to be voted against at all costs. He was the domineering power hungry type.
In fact, we had a new couple move in, and became friends with them. One night over drinks they told us that they only bought the house because they saw how badly the previous owners had maintained the yard. They said they knew once they saw that, they wouldn't be hassled about making improvements. They wanted to make their yard really nice, mind you, they just didn't want to deal with a whole bunch of paperwork.
Where I used to live here in SoCal, I think it was bit more difficult. I put in a new fence and had to get it approved by the HOA. But really it was just a paperwork hassle more than a fight, so it wasn't bad. Everything got signed off despite the fact that we were going from wood fencing to vinyl.
Actually as a libertarian, I rail against any entity that wants to tell me what I can or cannot do with my property whether it is inefficient or efficient, whether it is ineffectual or effectual.
Hey, as a libertarian, I'm with you. Because I'm responsible and well-behaved, and I would never do something crazy like put a pickup truck up on blocks in my front yard. So if I want to do some landscaping, etc, I have taste [or more accurately my wife does] and I guarantee it will improve the aesthetic of the neighborhood.
But I don't trust everyone else. Bad neighbors who don't maintain their property and who do things which destroy the character of the neighborhood are a drain on everyone else. They can impact the desirability of a property when it comes time to sell by tens of thousands of dollars.
As I said, a good HOA helps and protects all the homeowners in a neighborhood. A bad HOA is full of petty tyrants who like to lord over everyone in the neighborhood because they're attracted to power, even as minor as that of an HOA.
Libertarianism isn't anarchism. As a libertarian, I don't support the idea of a centralized Washington DC bureaucracy that is the HOA for the nation. Because you lose Voice and Exit. At a local level, however, where you have a choice of where to live, you have Voice and Exit. HOAs are neither ubiquitous nor identical. Some HOAs are more restrictive than others, some are less restrictive, and some neighborhoods have no HOA at all. Libertarians like the idea that each of us can choose to live in the community that matches our temperaments, and yours may be non-HOA. But some people prefer an HOA to avoid the risk of bad neighbors ruining their property values. And some people [for whatever reason] seem to love living in a cookie-cutter master-planned community where everything looks the same. I don't get it, but it's their choice.
