Edit just to clear up: I don’t have a positive or negative opinion on HOAs. I know next to nothing about them. They’ve just been mentioned to me a few times by family members recently and I asked about aspect I didn’t understand
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There is an opt out option. It’s called living somewhere else.
Some neighborhoods have opt-in “neighborhood associations” etc, but that’s different from an HOA.
Think of a condo building if it helps understand. That’s one piece of property subdivided among multiple owners, but they all have a stake in the whole building. If the roof falls off, they’re all in trouble.
Lots of HOA neighborhoods are technically “detached condos”. One large plot of land gets purchased by a developer who builds roads and houses on that land, but it’s still one piece of land owned by that company. Now they sell off individual lots to individual homeowners, but who owns the roads between the houses? The basketball court, the playground, the pool, etc? That’s all private land, so the company forms the HOA and now all the homeowners become part-owners of all that stuff.
Sure you could theoretically buy the house and opt out of the road maintenance, but eventually the roads are going to need repairs. If nobody is in the HOA, who is going to pay for the road repairs?
So as a group, the existing owners of the property (aka the HOA) have a vested interest in making sure that future home owners also have a stake in all that maintenance.
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