I think there is a high variance in how involved different HOAs are, so it's hard to make a blanket statement that you should totally avoid considering buying a property that's in an HOA.
My current house is in an HOA that's around ~$20 / month (which pays to keep some of the common spaces of the development maintained), has never gone up in ~4 years, and we've never been notified about anything needing to look better even when our lawn was in pretty rough shape the summer we moved in. We did some research and were pretty confident going into it that we weren't going to be dealing with an overbearing HOA, and I also like that the development and community areas (including a tennis court and basketball court) stay well maintained. In our case, it feels like we're getting a good deal for the cost.