The houses available in my area and price range all required an HOA. In general it’s not safe to assume all people have all options at all times.
Where I’ve bought houses, HOAs were rare. I’ve always heard about these places where HOAs are the only option but I fortunately haven’t run into one.
Listings:
No HOA fee: 32 up to $500/month: 62
I'm not going to bother because this is an HN comment but I think you can imagine what happens to the results when I specify newer than say 1993 (when my house was built).
I have an HOA, but it seems defunct. Everything we do to the house, if visible, can be interpreted to mean I must get unanimous agreements, in writing, from all my neighbors.
It turns out I managed to land right between two asshole neighbors (constant trespassing, dogs, etc)
HOAs are pushed by state and local Florida governments because they create stronger guarantees about what a new development will self-maintain (and therefore won't need to be immediately funded by a local government).
Also... high COL coastal Floridians (and especially transplants) seem to be incredibly conservative in the sense of 'I want to keep my neighbor from doing anything crazy.'
For them, HOAs are a guarantee that the asset they bought is less likely to be blighted by its neighbors.
Personally? It itched like hell when I lived there, and that was with a fairly relaxed HOA. One of the many reasons I'd never live in Florida again.
Free markets (and the associated "invisible hand") only work when choice is truly available, not purely theoretical.
What is the best alternative to that choice? You can’t answer since you aren’t the one in that position.
Frequently it is the least bad among a bunch of choices.
Choosing to go into crippling debt to pay cancer treatment bills is a choice too, but only a moron thinks the blame should be laid at the feet of the patient for making that “choice”.