Coos Bay dune-country cottage

Coos Bay is the largest town on the Oregon coast and, by some distance, the cheapest. It made its money in timber and shipping rather than tourism, which is why a three-bedroom cottage ten minutes from some of the most photographed shoreline in the Pacific Northwest still asks under three hundred thousand dollars.

The house is built for weather: cedar cladding over a well-insulated frame, a steep roof with generous overhangs, double glazing and a wood stove that handles the shoulder seasons cheaply. A hundred and eighteen square metres holds three bedrooms, two bathrooms, an open living and dining space with a vaulted ceiling, and a utility room by the back door for boots, crab pots and rain gear. A covered deck faces a fenced garden of salal and rhododendron.

Ten minutes west, the coast begins in earnest. Bastendorff Beach is a long crescent of pale sand and driftwood with surfable waves; Sunset Bay is a near-enclosed cove where the water is calm enough to swim; Shore Acres, on the headland between them, has botanical gardens above a cliff where winter storm waves throw spray twenty metres into the air. North of town, the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area runs for sixty kilometres — the largest coastal dune field in North America, open to hiking, sandboarding and off-road vehicles.

Practical life is easy by coastal standards: Coos Bay has a regional hospital, full supermarkets, hardware and a small airport with connections to Denver and San Francisco. Charleston's fishing harbour supplies crab and salmon straight off the boats. Bandon, thirty minutes south, has one of the great links golf resorts; Eugene and Interstate 5 are two hours inland.

Buyers should expect rain — around one and a half metres a year — cool summers and grey winters, and should budget for exterior maintenance in a marine climate. Oregon has no sales tax, straightforward conveyancing and no restrictions on out-of-state or foreign purchasers, though non-resident sellers face a withholding at closing. Check the property's flood and tsunami zoning and the age of the roof, and you have a genuine Pacific Northwest coastal base at a price that has all but vanished elsewhere on the west coast.