[sokoloff]

I think HOAs are an elegant way to segregate the population into "people who want to live under HOAs" and "people who would hate to live under HOAs".

Nobody is likely to be happy when these two groups have to live next to each other, so it's an elegant solution to sort the population into more compatible subsets. Everybody wins.

[fargle]

As do private dirt roads. Very handy.

I'd rather live in a real suburb - e.g. large plots, wells, septic. I'm not ideally fond of dirt roads in general, but nobody is going to be road racing a 1AM. It's at worst a minor inconvenience.

But for 80% of people its a deal breaker. Good! Now I found something I don't mind too much that saved me loads of money. And dirt roads come with no HOAs as a bonus.

Find something where your preferences run counter to the masses and profit!