Lubec shingled cottage, Bay of Fundy

Lubec, Maine is the easternmost town in the United States — the first place in the country to catch the sunrise — and it is also one of the cheapest coastal towns left in the nation. This two-bedroom white clapboard cottage, eighty-eight square metres on a quiet lot above the water, sells for less than a used car costs in some markets. That is not a reflection of the place; it is a reflection of how far Downeast Maine sits from anywhere, and for the right buyer that distance is the entire appeal.

The cottage is a classic Maine coastal form: a compact gabled box in painted clapboard with a brick chimney, a small ell off the back, and a shingled roof pitched to shed snow. Lobster traps stack against the fence — the previous owner fished, as half the town still does — and spruce shelter the north side from the wind. Inside, painted beadboard runs floor to ceiling, wide-board floors have been sanded and oiled, and a cast-iron wood stove sits at the centre of the plan doing most of the winter's work. The kitchen is simple and functional, with a window over the sink framing the water. Two bedrooms sit upstairs under the eaves; the bathroom has been renovated recently. Insulation was upgraded in the last decade and the basement is dry and full-height, which in this climate matters more than a marble worktop ever could.

The shoreline is a short walk away, and it is unlike any beach further south. This is the Bay of Fundy, where the tidal range reaches six metres and the water rearranges the coast twice a day. At low tide, dark sand flats and rockweed-covered ledge stretch out where a boat was floating six hours earlier; at high tide the coves fill to the grass line. The beaches are pebble and shingle, superb for walking and beachcombing, and the water is cold, clear and thick with plankton — which is exactly why the whales come. Finbacks, minkes and humpbacks feed in Passamaquoddy Bay through the summer, often visible from shore, and porpoises work the tide rips daily.

Above the town, West Quoddy Head Lighthouse stands in its famous red-and-white candy stripes on a cliff of wildflowers, marking the easternmost point of the continental United States. Quoddy Head State Park behind it offers cliff-edge trails, a rare coastal peat bog and the country's earliest sunrise. Five minutes the other way, the FDR Memorial Bridge crosses to Campobello Island in New Brunswick, where Roosevelt's summer cottage is preserved as an international park — a genuinely unusual perk of ownership here is having Canada within walking distance.

Lubec itself is a working town of roughly thirteen hundred people, and it has quietly become an artists' town too, drawn by the light, the cheap studios and the summer festival calendar. The IGA covers groceries, Water Street has a tavern and a handful of restaurants, and Frank's Dockside makes a lobster roll that people drive from Bangor for. Eastport, across the bay, adds galleries and a deepwater port. Machias, forty minutes west, provides the hospital, the university campus and full-scale supermarkets. Bangor International Airport is two and a half hours away by road.

Ownership costs are among the lowest on the American coast. Washington County property taxes on a cottage in this bracket typically run well under two thousand dollars a year, and because Lubec sits on rock well above the flood plain, insurance is ordinary homeowner coverage rather than the windstorm-plus-flood stack the Gulf and Florida demand. Heating is the real budget line — wood plus oil or a heat pump — and winters are long, dark and genuinely cold, a fact no honest listing should soften.

The trade-off, then, is straightforward. You give up warmth, convenience and nightlife. You gain a freehold house on one of the most dramatic coastlines in North America, whale spouts from the headland, spruce and fog and blueberry barrens, and a purchase price that most buyers can reach without a mortgage. Short-term letting through July, August and the autumn foliage season is strong, with lighthouse pilgrims, whale watchers, birders and hikers filling the calendar and covering a full year of costs in a few months.

For overseas buyers, Maine imposes no restrictions on foreign ownership, title is fee-simple, and a closing here is refreshingly simple. If your idea of the coast is a wood stove, a thick jumper and the first sunrise in America, this is the cheapest way to buy it.