Banned is maybe too far, but why should we as a country allow people to have petty power over meaningless things their neighbors do? Could we ban HOAs from being included in house sales, and every time it's sold the new owners have to opt in?
For the most part, I'm wondering about this in the context of single family homes since for homes like condos, you could make the case that HOAs are useful for shared things like roofs and whatnot. Maybe limit mandatory HOA involvement to things like what's truly necessary and shared and not how tall your grass is?
The problem is "we were told". If the real estate says something, tell them to include that in writing in the contract. If they don't, they lied.
There are a lot for things I wish 20 some year old me knew when we bought that house.
Luckily, I knew that already, but I was a bit older when I signed the contract.