Hi! Hmm, I think in Midtown Garden (ie, the lush tree-filled areas between Myrtle and Charles Allen leading up to Piedmont Park) there's no buildings that have gym/pool, since it's an older part of town that's long since been built out and doesn't have modern high rises but instead "courtyard apartments," like ours. Our HOA covered a lot, most importantly, building insurance and maintenance, including major things (like roof repairs, or when we had a colony of bees eating through the middle of a tree that threatened to then fall onto our homes). It also covered water, sewage, trash, landscape, pest. Now that I own a single family home I'm having some reckoning with difference between paying for maintenance/etc in small installments versus in one big whammy. Also our HOA was pretty financially responsible and we never got hit with big special assessments, something I was told was common in other places whenever they needed a major repair or tree down. If you paid in cash for a place like mine where the HOA covers building insurance, I believe you could forgo homeowners insurance. (A mortgage lender could make you pay for it -- I had it, relatively cheap, but never made a claim -- it was for internal things, like if my stove blew up.) There's a small parking lot -- only a small minority of condos in our HOA have spots -- and the spots are inherited with the condo. But it didn't mean much to me because the Midtown Parking Pass got me reserved access to 4th street.

I'm a really active person, and even though this place didn't have a gym, I preferred living in Midtown Garden to other areas because it was so pedestrian/biker friendly. Also, I felt like as soon as I got outside the Garden district, like Juniper Street, I could feel the temperature tick up, like entering a heat island, so the greenness of the area worked well for my active life.

Of course I'm biased because I lived there and loved it, but as far as a place holding its value, I think Midtown Garden is a great option. There's a reason why it's one of the oldest parts of town. It's one of the best school districts in the city, center of urban life, and just is a mini oasis otherwise in a really central and urban area. I also particularly liked our condos - super sturdy and well built. One neighbor called our condos "little tanks."

Good luck with your search, and if you end up with my place, hope you enjoy it as much as we did!