Looking for 1.5–5 acres in Western WA/OR for a resilient permaculture homestead. Where would you loo

Hi everyone. New member here, and really glad I found this community.

My wife and I currently live in the Phoenix/Scottsdale area and are seriously considering leaving the desert and establishing a small homestead in the Pacific Northwest, most likely Western Washington or Western Oregon.

We’re not looking to disappear completely into the wilderness. Ideally, we’d like roughly 1.5-5 acres within reasonable driving distance of a decent-sized town and everyday amenities, healthcare, airport access, etc., while still having enough land to create something genuinely productive.

Our vision is less traditional farming and more of a long-term permaculture/regenerative homestead: large vegetable gardens, fruit and nut trees, berries, greenhouse, possibly some animals, rainwater management, composting, soil building, and gradually creating a diverse little ecosystem that becomes more productive and resilient over time.

Reliable water is extremely important to us. After living in Arizona, climate change, long-term water availability, wildfire risk and extreme heat are very much on our minds.

We’ve been looking at places including southwest Washington around Battle Ground, Lewis and Cowlitz Counties, the Olympia/Shelton area, and in Oregon around Corvallis and the Willamette Valley. But we’re absolutely not married to those locations and would love to hear about places we haven’t considered.

We’d also be perfectly happy buying land with an older house, manufactured home, barn, shop or other existing structures. In fact, having an existing well, septic, electricity and usable outbuildings could be a big advantage. We’re much more interested in good land than in having a fancy house.

For those of you who actually homestead in WA or OR:

If you were buying your property again today, where would you look?

And perhaps more importantly, what do you wish you had known before buying?

I’d especially love to hear about things that aren’t obvious from real-estate listings: soil and drainage, wells and groundwater, winter saturation, septic issues, county permitting, wildfire/smoke, microclimates, growing seasons, taxes, insurance, invasive plants, access to supplies and anything else that surprised you after living on the land.

We’re at the stage where local knowledge is much more valuable to us than another Zillow search.

Thanks in advance. I’m looking forward to learning from people who are actually doing this.