Why do people agree to homeowner associations?

If you own a condo or a house in a community where maintenance on common roads or lands, someone has to pay for that maintenance. The rules are in place to protect you. For example, if you bought a house in a high end community, would you want some lowlife with money leaving 10 junk cars on the lawn and depreciating your investment? That being said, some of the rules and some of the people enforcing them are just ridiculous.

In theory, they're a good idea. A small feel quarterly/biannually/whatever and your lawn gets taken care of the the roads and sidewalks are maintained? Sounds wonderful. Then some Karen gets in power and boom, suddenly that shade of white isn't correct, your flag pole is .025 inches too short, your car isn't new enough to park on the street, etc.

I believe that these days when a builder builds a new neighborhood and starts to sell houses, they sometimes make it a condition on the deed that you've got to join the HOA. Thus if you like the neighborhood, you might be stuck with the HOA. It might be especially true with gated communities.

Personally, I've never owned a house subject to an HOA, but I used to own a condo, and those rules can be similar.

New build social houses often come with legal traps in the UK. Even our corrupt government acknowledges it needs sorting out.

Why? That seems not only just plain daft but a help to thieves.

That's fucking crazy, I would get a lawyer and take them to court with the concern that your stuff is gonna be stolen. I'm not even sure why that's even a thing. They're like God or something.

They can't force you to be unsafe.

People who agree to those HOAs are usually young folks with more money than sense. By the time they realize what a bad idea it is, it's too late.

Because there has to be certain minimum standards otherwise you get trash with a couch and neon pink kiddie pool in their front yard and neighbors shooting at minorities while chewing their tobacco.
On the other hand many of the rules go too far. Like to the point of turning all the houses into carbon copies of each other to the point of pleasantville vibes.
I have seen the extremes on both ends tbh.