I bought in Cambridge 12 years ago and it's more than doubled in value. It's one of two units in a wood-frame house.

We haven't had any problem with the HOA. There's only the two of us, so if you're both personable and reasonable people you can make things work. Of course, if one of you is unreasonable, that could of course be a problem.

We haven't had issues with family noise because we were both roughly the same age -- they had kids, then we had kids, then their (now) renters moved in and had kids, so everyone understands kid noise.

I have heard of condo-mates who can't stand kid noises, in this case they were older people, though I don't know that that's always the demographic. I don't really understand that. If you're going to live in a condo, you're going to hear the other people. If you want to live out in the country, go live in the country.