Yes, this happens all the time in non-HOA neighborhoods.
/sarcasm
Don’t live under a HOA (and never would), but there are certainly Nazi-like ones around.
Our State Legislature had to pass a law preventing HOA’s, Condo Associations, and even towns & cities from prohibiting campaign lawn signs during election campaigns, to protect our rights in a democracy.
Our town doesn’t have HOAs, but the town has bylaws that are similar. A neighborhood had a fold-down camping trailer in their driveway and were told it was illegal. They had to build a small shelter to hide it. I don’t think any vehicle with a commercial name on it would have been allowed. The front lawn could not have vegetables (that was recently repealed and the town is actually encouraging it). Not that I paid any attention to it and they didn’t really try to enforce it. Your trash cans were not allowed to be visible from the street. Again they didn’t really try to enforce that.
My son lives in a place with an HOA. He wanted to paint his house red (a subdued brick red) and wasn’t allowed. So he ran for the presidency of the HOA. And won, the previous president being grateful for finding a replacement. So he gave himself a waiver. That was at least 15 years ago and his house is no longer even red, but he is still president, not having found anyone foolish enough to want to replace him.
I now live in a condo, aside from a couple rules like, nothing is allowed to stay in the garage except a car or motorcycle, the rules are very minimal.
There’s an old saying about the two happiest days in a condo President’s life.
I know people who have sold and moved away because it was the only way to escape the job.
Truly I enjoyed my time and will probably do it again. But it is a lot of work, and you do meet the occasional turd of a human being.
While I think Marvin_the_Martian was using a little exaggeration for effect, an ex of mine had trouble selling her starter house because her next door neighbor painted his house to look like an American flag. She ended up having to use it as a rental for several years.
HOA is trying to require residents to keep their garage doors open from 8:00 - 4:00 daily
They may have tried this but no way it was ever implemented for long. They can’t fine everyone and who the hell would comply with it?
A poster over in the gardening thread mentioned that they had a large planter at the end of their driveway that they were making plans for, but the HOA wouldn’t allow them to plant vegetables in it.
Too déclassé? The threat of unsavory animals invading the pristine neighborhood to snack on the crop? The possibility that a tomato might drop and stain the pavement?
The mind boggles.
We’ve lived in two HOA communities where growing anything edible was only allowed in areas not visible from the street. This meant directly behind the house which in one case was in shade for the whole day except for a few weeks in midsummer when there was an hour or so of sun.
From reading HOA stories, your son should become draconian in the rules and get voted out.
That was me. As I recall, it had to do with the view from the street. I would also need approval from the grounds committee for any landscaping changes to the from of the house, such as tree or bush removal/planting. I can do anything I want in the back yard or along the side of the house, which would be behind the planter. Interestingly enough, I once asked the head of the grounds committee if I could plant vegetable behind the planter, and was told that would be fine, because the planter and the lattice fence behind it would block the view from the street. Unfortunately, that space is too shaded and would also require serious work to make it suitable for gardening.
I am generally satisfied with my HMO, which I checked out before buying. They completely resided the house a number of years ago, replaced the deck along the side of the house (where I’ve got my container garden), and just two weeks ago repaired the sidewalk leading up to my front steps.
My inlaws live in a retirement community with an HOA. It isn’t too bad, but one rule is that For Sale signs are not allowed in the yard. They can only be displayed in a window. I’m not sure I understand the thinking behind that one, except there would always be signs due to residents dying and their heirs trying to sell the properties.
The horror show HOA we were under in Georgia passed this rule when 20% of the homes were on the market. Driving through a neighborhood to see a house, you might be spooked by the number of for sale signs there were and start looking into why.
Similarly my wife had a listing in a “planned multi-use development” where the HOA fees were skyrocketing and they severely restricted how you could market your property. For 90 days you had to have it listed by the sales office of the development (not in MLS) and no For Sale signs were allowed at all. They thought they could stem the tide of exodus, but they couldn’t. The developers had to “buy down” the HOA fees for years to stabilize the market.
It’s not uncommon here either to forbid For Sale signs, at least in blocks of flats (certainly the one I live in). It looks untidy, if too many it might look as though there’s something wrong with the place, and estate agents are notorious for not removing them when out of date, and/or placing them so they look as though they might apply to some other flat altogether. Culturally, we know to go through other media if we’re looking to buy or rent.
On political signs I don’t think we have a rule, but no-one seems to do it (it would be a sticker inside the window which wouldn’t be that visible in any case). My Estonian neighbours have a small national flag in their window-box, and there’s usually a sprinkling of rainbow flags at Pride, or a big international sporting event may bring out national flags. I think it depends on guesses as to what might cause acrimony, certainly no rigid management rule.
My friend lives in am HOA neighbor but driving through it it sure as hell doesn’t look HOA run. Lots of crappy lawns everywhere mainly. My friend once had to mow his lawn on short notice (within 4 hours of getting a notice on his doorstep) because he let it grow too tall and uneven which pissed him off but to be fair his lawn did look like shit.
That could have been the city and not his HOA - one coworker got cited for his lawn a couple of years back. He was annoyed but admitted it had gotten long (can’t remember why he had not mowed it).
I’ve been in a neighborhood with an HOA for the past 22 years. Sorry, no horror stories.
We’re a neighborhood of about 200 single-family homes, and our annual HOA dues are less than $100/year. I’ve been on the board for the past 3 years, and the only infraction we’ve had concerning what people did with their houses and yards that we thought was worth doing anything about, was when one homeowner basically let their yard turn into a jungle.
We’re pretty relaxed about most stuff. Your garage door can be open or closed, you can park your work truck in the driveway, you can have your political signs in the yard or even political flags from your flagpole (yeah, we had that last year), whatever.
Wouldn’t something like this open him up for legal liability? It seems like the HOA president granting himself an exception on paint color is a violation of his legal responsibilities as HOA president. Can the HOA board grant themselves exceptions on everything without any consequences other than being voted off the board?
Self-dealing is illegal, at least in FL where I am.
But for petty crap like a paint color waiver it’d be hard for somebody to prove actual monetary damages in a civil suit. Most any RE attorney taking that case will want you to pay cash up front for every minute they invest in tilting at this windmill. And you’d never interest the prosecutor in charging the guy with a technical violation of some obscure provision of the HOA regulations.
Unless said prosecutor was about to start a run for the state legislature and wanted to hang his populist hat on curbing corrupt and eeeviiillll power mad HOAs.
Well, nothing actually happened to him, except he is still HOA president, which is punishment itself.
You worry about how someone else might paint their own house and think you should have a say in the decision? Enough to want to bring outside authority to bear on the issue? How conformist and small-minded.
Our only experience w/ a HOA was when we were considering buying a house in a town I had been transferred to. (We actualy put in contracts on 3 houses there. All 3 fell through - 2 due to grossly failed inspections. We since moved back to our home area.)
This house was new construction in a decent sized subdivision. The person we dealt with was the daughter of the builder. It turns out that for all intents and purposes, she was the HOA. They reasonably wanted some variation of house colors, so as not to have street after street of beige houses. For whatever reason, they wanted our house to be a brightly colored one.
So we agreed to - what we thought were - some pretty bright colors which we’d seen in their other subdivisions. Turned out she wanted us to choose among 3 or so specific very bright colors - none of which we liked. When we didn’t immediately agree to one of those colors, we suddenly found that our earnest money had been refunded - with absolutely no communication from them! 
We consider that a bullet dodged.