We've owned single family homes with no HOA, a condo and now a single family home with a HOA in a 55+ community.
I love it here. We like to keep our property nice and the HOA here provides guardrails to ensure that. While I don't think it is required, almost everyone here parks their vehicles in their garage and nobody parks on the street other than perhaps visitors. The only person that I know f that doesn't park in their garage parks in the driveway because his big-a$$ truck won't fit in his garage. DD and DSis both live in nice neighborhoods but each have lots of cars parked on the street or in driveways which is unattractive to me by comparison to where we live.
When we lived in Florida we lived in a condo. Also, I served on the Board for one term and one year as Treasurer. Most of our owners previously owned single family homes and were totally clueless about what they could or couldn't do and where the Association's responsibility ended and theirs began. For many owners it was rarely right but never in doubt.
We've been lucky in that our single family homes without a HOA are in communities that are generally kept up nice, but if you ended up with some slob as a neighbor with 6 dilipated cars in the yard, peeling paint, unmown lawn or whatever, there would be nothing that you can do about it. So I'll take the HOA, thank you.
Now none of the above really has much to do with 55+ other than I think most 55+ communities also includes a HOA. Some 55+ have minimal or even no amenities, but 55+ just keeps the owners over 55. Ours includes a lot: 4 amenity centers with fitness facilities and pools and meeting rooms, 3 par-72 golf courses within 2 miles of each other, 50 clubs, a nice ballroom and facilities for bocce, horseshoes, billiards, tennis, pickleball, softball, a woodshop, 27 miles of hiking trails, and more.
