A lot of the appeal of HOAs como from the obsession americans have of seeing their homes as investments. An illusion conveniently fueled by the marketing of ban

A lot of the appeal of HOAs como from the obsession americans have of seeing their homes as investments. An illusion conveniently fueled by the marketing of banks and realtors. Americans usually have this idea that a home is a valuing asset, because they mistake price inflation, fueled mostly by a constrained supply in some growing markets, with true asset valuation. It is not like something magic happened in the bay area and trillions of dollars have magically been added as true value for the existing house, it was just price inflation most of the time. When Detroit was an american economic power-house people probably thought that their properties would value indefinitelly. But the thing is, even if a local supply constraint is sustainable over time, either because of real space limits (like in Manhattan where the only way to build new space is by first demolishing something) or because of zoning restrictions, nothing guarantees that the demand will stay strong forever. And even if local demand stay strong, we can expect it to decrease globally some moment in the future, as we enter a demographic transition where population starts to actually shrink instead of grow. Take out the my-home-as-a-valuing-asset notion, and a lot of the drawbacks of this style of community (lack of privacy due to the absence of front yard fences/block walls, increasing fees, annoying restrictions) become more salient.