As someone who owns a townhome, I feel that this is a misinformed, but common, view of the situation.
> You probably can't put in a workshop because the noise would bother the neighbors.
We hear far more noise from the neighborhood in general than the neighbors we share a wall with. Granted they might just be particularly quiet people, but there is some significant sound-deadening in that wall.
I think this is partly because of fire code that says the wall needs to withstand a 30 minute fire before crossing over into the neighboring unit.
> You often don't have any sort of yard or outside space so you can't pursue hobbies that can't reasonably be practiced indoors.
This is perhaps unique to our situation, but the area has never been fully built-out, so we have a 5 acre plot of land that the kids can play on as they please.
Since most of our neighbors never come outside, we actually have an enormous yard that we get basically to ourselves.
> You can't modify the outside of the house so you are limited in your ability to customize your home
This is true to an extent, but there isn't really all that much worth customizing on the outside of a house.
I guess you could pick different colored siding, but that seems like an expense I wouldn't be motivated enough to take on.
> I guess my concern is that this would lead to a world where only the rich can have homes that give true ownership and everyone else is stuck in multi-family homes.
Honestly this stigma is something I am benefiting from a ton.
I have 1200 feet of living space, plus an attached 2 car garage, plus a 5 acre yard. I paid $106k for all that. I pay $100 / month to the HOA and get lawn / snow taken care of. It's honestly great.
To get an equivalent standalone house in the area I'd be looking at 2-3x the cost.