High HOA?

I am a first time homebuyer in the greater Boston metro area. I wasn't quite planning on buying as soon as I am but our apartments are being converted to condos and I don't want to buy it as a condo. So we are between going to another apartment or just buying a home but not having the down-payment we would ideally want.

So far with the criteria we currently have, we are mostly finding townhouses. We found one that is too far and had an HOA of $500/month. And one that fits the rest of our criteria but it has an HOA of $1200/month.

Every body seems to think it's a terrible idea, even if we can easily handle the monthly payment. Definitely my parents. But even our agent thinks we would be better off finding a single family home, but there's just not any fitting our criteria on the market right now.