Don't get me wrong, I totally see why HOA's would be important. But in my experience I end up dealing with HOA staff who have nothing better to do than complain about the petty stuff with people's houses. Or they wait until someone is completely done with a project before telling them they did it outside of HOA guidelines.

I know there are good ones and bad ones. Currently I live in a neighborhood that does not have one and Aurora Code Enforcement does a really good job of making sure people aren't parking cars on their lawns and what not. The neighborhood I lived in when I was teen in Thornton also did not have a HOA but Thornton Code Enforcement (who I referred to as Nazi's at the time) did a good job of making sure people weren't messy and their grass was not to long and so on.

Plus I have seen a lot of HOA fraud thus far (Not saying that they are all like that) just saying that I have seen quite a bit.