I honestly don't know why anyone would ever want to do that. To me, it's only done out of necessity, and is a driving force in motivating people to get the hell out of that situation asap.
But the cool thing is, some people can choose that, if that's what they desire, even though I can't understand why.
Why?
Maintenance was outsourced, and at a lower price than I could pay for myself (100 households at once get a good group buy price!)
Everything on the exterior of my house was taken care of.
The complex has 2 shared green spaces, one for dogs, one for people. The large green space for people is bigger than the yard in my current single family home. All year round weatherproof commercial yard furniture was already on the property.
Every year my windows got cleaned, the deck power washed. Landscaping was professionally handled, trees trimmed, pests removed, all w/o me having to worry about any of it.
I'd buy another unit in complex with that design again w/o issue or hesitation.
With proper construction techniques (which sadly that complex didn't have), sound is not an issue. Sound dampening is a solved problem, and I've lived in other complexes that had the same sound leakage from connected neighbors and I have from my neighbors right now in the house on the lots around me.
The next thing you know you've been trying to get the broken communal door/gate/sewer/extractor fan/lights/electric/gas/whatever fixed for months if not years and no one at the management company is even returning calls, and you sure as hell can't fix it yourself since you are not legally allowed to do it (and you can guarantee that if you were to do something yourself the dormant management company would suddenly spring to life and sue you to hell and back). Then next summer they hike the management and maintenance prices 500% and there is fuck all you can do apart from suck it up because now you can't sell because no one wants to pay the high fee, and you can't not pay it as you'll be taken to court for non-payment of contract within days (and P.S. their contract says they can hike the prices as they please because wow look at that cool yard for dogs! I totally forgot to read the entire contract.whatevs.)
TL;Dr it is great while it is all working fine. IME after a few years once the initial glean and glow has worn off and things start to naturally wear out and break, it will go to shit. It will start small with broken lawn furniture that doesn't get replaced, then before you know it the roof is leaking and there is nothing you can do apart from hope the people you pay to look after the place but are not responding to emails or calls actually do something.
But hey good luck with your place anyway.
HOAs are member voted, it is a thankless job and improving things is as simple as running for the board, every time someone has wanted to take over they have been welcomed on. The HOA there has been going strong for almost 25 years, doing a great job managing the place.
The HOA did indeed fire their previous management company for incompetence, since the complex is in a large metro area, there is no shortage of competition in that field.
Edit: Oh and it isn't like people I hire myself are super reliable! I've had vendors working on my house ghost me, sometimes in the middle of a job. And there is also the cost of my time in learning about different fields (e.g. yard irrigation), collecting multiple quotes, and trying to do background checks to ensure the people giving the quotes do good work.
Unless it's just the knowledge that there's people on the other side of the wall bothers you, but that seems silly.
At most, what I've seen is people saying we should not be forced to build _only_ this type of dwelling in a given place.
Life naturally fills the ecosystem it finds itself in to carrying capacity. The sustainable limitations here are financial, ecological, and regulatory. I think we're hitting up against those constraints right now. Unless they want to pay us more money, we're going to have to sacrifice the environment or car centric regulations to continue growing. If we decide to just stop growing, then we either need changes in regulations to further disincentivize growth or allow a ton of suffering to happen.