Where I live, HOA is one of the things on the standard disclosure form a realator (or is that Realator?) gives you when you look serious about a house.
As to your good/bad statement - so people like living in an HOA because they do the social pressure thing to keep the place up to standard (whatever that standard may be). I’m in an HOA, and it is fairly innocuous. It contracts for snow removal and mowing of common areas, and (mostly) stays out of the way beyond that. A lot of that MYOB is down to the current board, of course - previously we had a guy who liked to drive around and find infractions. He mostly just dropped notes in mailboxes, and people kind of just ignored him.