They can, and likely will, put a lien on your house which makes it harder to sell. Probably other avenues to fuck up your life too. Around me it's really hard to find a house without an HOA. It's probably like 90% of the market, or I triple my commute.

It's legally binding with the purchase of the house so there's no going around it.

Yes, the fines are legally enforceable because (generally) you have to agree to them in order to purchase the house - joining the HOA and being bound by its rules either literally or functionally becomes a permanent part of the deed to the property. There isn't a legally viable argument that you only signed that part under duress because you could have chosen to live somewhere else instead. You could technically get a like-minded group of neighbors to run for the HOA leadership roles and eliminate the petty rules, but the rider contract to the deed still exists.

They can be very powerful, certainly when hijacked by lawyers, John Oliver did a bit on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrizmAo17Os

It's incredible, and horrendous.

I'm pretty sure they can legally take your house away from you.

They can charge you fines, and if you don’t pay them they can put a lien on your house.

So no they can’t kick you out, but they can make it so that you’re unable to leave without paying them.

We have hoa-equivalents in Europe, tho. In my country they're called something like 'owners community', and they can even take your home if your debt with them gets too big. But I don't think they can fine you directly, the have to sue you, and the rules aren't usually as insane as in the States, but they can ban you from installing the windows you want, putting up a flag, hang your clothes to dry on the front...

An HOA can literally take over your home if you owe them fines, even if the fines are wrong. They can evict you, sell your home, and keep all the money, and there isn't a thing you can do to stop them. There are countless stories of HOAs getting vindictive toward a specific homeowner, and targeting them for foreclosure.

It should be illegal for anyone to take your PAID-OFF house for taxes, HOA fees/fines, or any other reason. The government and the HOA are infinite, and will be there after the homeowner dies or sells, and they can get their money then. Nobody should be able to take your house away for any reason, or there is no such thing as home ownership.

It depends entirely on the location. My HOA is like 100 a year and it pays specifically for a security guard, a camera, and a few yearly neighborhood events.
This means if someone in the neighborhood decides to park an RV in their front yard and let grass grow 6 ft tall, it's up to their actual neighbors to go and knock on their door and tell them to buddy that looks like shit.

Other neighborhoods with amenities (like pools, tennis courts, country clubs, private security, secret police, drones, etc) have much higher fees to pay for those things.

Enforcement depends on the context you sign when you buy the house/condo/etc.

If you'd like a hilarious description of exactly where this system logically concludes, read like the first 2 chapters of "Snow Crash"

(If this sounds exactly like taxes paying for public infrastructure, it absolutely is, but with one difference: it encourages the absolutely worst people in the neighborhood with the most time to make everything their business. Eventually whatever their prevailing bigotry is bubbles into existence in the form of harassment like OP describes.)

https://nypost.com/2026/09/15/real-estate/arizona-man-loses-475k-home-over-977-hoa-debt/

Sorry for the nypost link