I liked my old house in a 1-1/2 acre of old growth woods, brush, weeds, wildflowers and no grass needing to mow where I had an annual all-day recreational burn with family and neighbors of downed branches and many whole trees. Maintenance in retirement in taking out 75 foot tall overgrown cottonwood trees, branches and such was costing me more than my now HOA fees annually, but it didn't dawn on me until after the fact. I did like the old-fashion freedom of living without interference and rules.
Now I've further retired to a private 16 home cul-de-sac HOA where vehicles have to be garaged but all exterior maintenance including gutter cleaning, mowing, driveway plowing, etc. is done by others but I still have an adjacent unmaintained county woods where I have cut a shortcut path through to a bike/hiking trail plus a 1-1/2 acre city storm water retainment which I am planting wildflowers. An adjacent 3,700 acre regional park with 10 small lakes was adequate compensation formerly living in the middle a 14,000 acre Lake Minnetonka since I long ago sold my boat and down sized to kayaks.
This is the location of old house, new house and condo garage.
I was kind of worried about where I would park my Class B until it dawned on me I didn't have to rent storage but I could buy into another HOA, a condo garage development that is turning out to be a pretty convenient and lucrative investment according to the property tax assessor after 3 years, man cave and wood shop with community bathroom, water, RV dump station, huge wash stall and WiFi. It is kind of interesting with garage neighbors of small businesses, classic car collections, boats, and RVs. I bought the smallest unit available at 18' x 45' mucho adequate for a Class B.
HOA's I'm saying are not all that bad if you can get advantages out of them.
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