Condo HOA questions to ask

[Fred Conway]

Hey all, 

long story short, i'm looking to buy my first condo, HOA is $300 a month, the #s make sense but as I've heard, HOA's can make any deal go bad with rules and requests. What questions I should be asking for buying a condo with an HOA. Obviously I need to understand what the HOA covers as far as insurance, cable, water, etc, but what do I need to know about occupation rates and who's on the HOA board, etc?

Thanks