I, personally, won't buy property in an HOA controlled area.  I've found that most HOA's are run by people that don't have the knowledge or expertise to intelligently manage expectations and concerns of people in a neighborhood.  Most tend toward 'power' and overuse their the overly controlling covenants found in most HOA documents.  The last HOA property I owned had a covenant document that was over 200 pages long, all in legalize, requiring a lawyer to decipher.  Who can afford to pay a lawyer to decipher 200 or more pages?  That would likely add several tens of thousands of dollars of cost to buying the house.  

No thanks.  HOA = No Deal for me.