Coos Bay Luxury & Waterfront Homes For Sale

For much of its history, Coos Bay was reliant on its vast natural resources, including timber, fishing, ranching and mining. A temperate climate, plenty of rain, clean air and big open spaces made for a healthy, prosperous population during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Fortunes were made in shipbuilding and transporting raw goods to the San Francisco and Portland markets. Timber, beef, lamb, dairies, cheese, salmon fishing, tuna canning, fresh halibut and Dungeness crab, all made for a good living for area residents.

Today, like many post industrial, middle class cities, Coos Bay is going through a transition, fram a resource driven economy to something new that has not entirely evolved to its finished state. It is a more diversified economy that is part tourism, part service, part natural resources, and part servicing a growing retirement community. 

Progress is evident.. The seeds of gentrification are sprouting on the main thoroughfares and side streets, where you’ll find the new coffee shops and bakeries, the Farmer’s Market (located on Central Avenue around the corner from our Coastal Sotheby’s International Realty office in Coos Bay), and a growing diversity of restaurants (sophisticated new age offerings at Restaurant O, modern Japanese at Tokyo Bistro, Neapolitan style pizzeria and cafe at Front Street Provisioners, to name a few). The Coos Art Museum is a wonderful place to visit in the downtown business district. The Egyptian Theatre is newly renovated. There’s anew major shopping center nearing completion on the waterfront, and more new commercial construction underway. All these new businesses, new construction projects, and older buildings being renovated are taking hold and transforming the area.

As the old economy fades, new businesses and industries are spining up and taking their place: tourism, call centers, health care, internet based services and consultancies, and transportation via one of the west coast’s deepest maritime harbors, are staking a claim in the local economy’s evolving future.

People often remark that from the air, Coos Bay and North Bend, wrapped as they are by miles of sloughs and tiewater streams, have the lovely appearance of the San Francisco bay. Popular residential areas including Telegraph Hill and Date Street look out on the waterways, with homes that buyers find to be surprisingly good values.

There’s more than meets the eye in this town. It’s an exciting time, with new blood, new hopes, and new dreams. The residual grittiness is still apparent, but there is a bright sense of promise in the air that cannot be denied.