Are you willing to share the general area? I’m curious.

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.

I just went to zillow and typed in my zip and tried two different filters for single family homes priced between $300K-$550K:

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)