Belgium, WI

Belgium is two governments sharing one name and one ZIP code, and this guide covers both. The Village of Belgium is a small incorporated village along I-43. The Town of Belgium is the rural town that surrounds the village on every side and runs east to Lake Michigan. Each has its own board, its own tax rate and its own zoning.

The sizes are very different. The Census 2024 gazetteer puts the village at 2.15 square miles of land and the town at 35.6 square miles. The 2020 census counted 2,421 people in the village and 1,450 in the town, according to Wikipedia's village and town,_Wisconsin) entries, and the Department of Revenue estimates 2,519 and 1,467 for 2025.

The town borders the Town of Holland in Sheboygan County to the north, Lake Michigan to the east, the Town of Port Washington to the south and the Town of Fredonia to the west. The village sits about two miles inland from the lake, beside I-43 at Exit 107. Belgium is the northernmost part of Ozaukee County and one of the northernmost communities in the Milwaukee metro area.

Coming from Lake County, Illinois, the tax bill is the first number compared, and in Belgium it also tells you which Belgium you are in. A village parcel and a town parcel a few hundred feet apart can differ by more than a dollar per $1,000 of value, and the town alone is split among three school districts.

The Town of Belgium came first. Wikipedia records that it was created in 1848 out of the Town of Port Washington. The village grew around a railroad station: the Northwestern Railway set up a station in 1864, and the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway began running through in 1872. In the early 20th century Belgium was a stop on the Milwaukee-to-Sheboygan interurban line, which ran from 1908 to 1948. Houses clustered around the station, and the Village of Belgium incorporated out of the town in 1922.

The town's lakeshore has an industrial past. From 1901 to 1925, the Lake Shore Stone Company ran a dolomite quarry and a company town called Stonehaven at the site of today's Harrington Beach State Park. When the quarry closed, some of its houses were moved into the village, and building foundations remain in the park. The flooded quarry is now a 26-acre lake.

The 20th century kept Belgium agricultural. Wikipedia notes that a cannery processing fruits and vegetables from area farms was still the village's largest employer as of 2015. I-43, built in the 1960s, connected the village to Milwaukee and Green Bay, and the old interurban right-of-way became the Ozaukee Interurban Trail in the late 1990s and 2000s.

I read Belgium in four parts. The grouping is mine, from the geography and from where the October 2026 listings geocoded.

The first is the village itself: an older core along Main Street near the old rail line and the Interurban Trail, and newer subdivisions around it. The Census geocoder placed October 2026 listings on Louvain Lane, Bastogne Court, Horseshoe Court, Hickory Street, Heritage Street and Main Street inside the village. The village's housing is much newer than the town's, as the next section shows.

The second is the Lake Michigan shore in the east of the town. Wikipedia describes a coastline lined with sand and gravel beaches, with the hamlet of Sauk Trail Beach, Harrington Beach State Park and, in the southern part of the town, the 116-acre Forest Beach Migratory Preserve.

The third is the farm town: most of the 35.6 square miles, with farmsteads, country houses and large parcels. The Town of Belgium says nearly 16,000 acres of it are prime farmland protected under the state farmland preservation plan. The Onion River, Sauk Creek and Sucker Creek run through it. Wikipedia adds two numbers that show how rural it is: as of 2000, the town had more than 18,000 acres of agricultural land, the most of any Ozaukee County community, and as of 2002 it had the county's largest share of restored wetlands, more than 126 acres across 105 restoration sites. That mix of cropland and wetland is what most of the town looks like from the road.

The fourth is the I-43 corridor, which runs north-south through the eastern part of the town past the village, with Exit 107 the access point.

The village and the town have opposite housing stocks. In the village, the 2020-2024 American Community Survey counts 1,038 housing units (plus or minus 146). Of those, 622 are single-family detached, 83 attached single-family and 255 in two-unit buildings, the last with a wide margin. Of 1,015 occupied homes, 868, about 86%, are owner-occupied. The village's median home was built in 1994, unusually recent for a village founded in 1922: the ACS counts 266 homes from the 2000s, 176 from the 2010s and 22 from 2020 or later.

The town is the reverse. The ACS for the town counts 691 units (plus or minus 103), 637 of them single-family detached. Its median home was built in 1956, and 250 homes, more than a third, were built before 1940, most of them farmhouses. Of 564 occupied homes, 477, about 85%, are owner-occupied. The ACS also counts 111 seasonal units in the town (plus or minus 34). The survey does not say where they are; given the town's lakeshore, I'd expect many near the beach, but I could not confirm that.

Values follow the same split. The ACS median owner value is $244,600 in the village (plus or minus $28,664), with only 11 owner homes valued at $500,000 or more. In the town it is $357,700 (plus or minus $58,434), with 83 owner homes at $500,000 to $749,999, 37 at $750,000 to $999,999, 25 at $1 million to $1.5 million and 2 at $1.5 million to $2 million.

The checklist differs by type. A 2000s village house is mostly about roof, mechanicals and finishes. A pre-1940 farmhouse in the town can come with a fieldstone foundation, old wiring, a well, a septic system and outbuildings that each need their own inspection.

Belgium's lakeshore is mostly public or protected. Harrington Beach State Park, Ozaukee County's only state park, covers 715 acres on Lake Michigan in the town, with a mile-long beach, a white cedar swamp around the 26-acre former quarry lake, hiking trails, picnic areas and a campground that opened in 2009. The park's Wikipedia entry says the state began buying the land in 1968, that the campground opened with 73 sites as the first new Wisconsin state park campground in more than 20 years, and that before it opened the park drew up to 120,000 visitors a year. For a nearby owner, that means summer weekend traffic on the roads to the park. Wikipedia's town entry also describes the 116-acre Forest Beach Migratory Preserve, a former golf course along the lake in the southern part of the town, run by the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust, with forests, grasslands, restored wetlands and a nature center.

That leaves a limited stretch of private lakeshore, around the hamlet of Sauk Trail Beach and along the shore roads. On October 5, 2026, the public Belgium search page I checked showed no lakefront listing, so I have no dated asking price for Belgium's Lake Michigan frontage. The ACS's 111 seasonal units in the town and its count of 25 owner homes valued at $1 million to $1.5 million suggest a real lakeshore tier, but the survey does not say where those homes are.

Belgium is not a $2 million lakefront market. For Lake Michigan frontage in Ozaukee County, the Town of Port Washington to the south had lakefront houses listed at $1.2 million to $1.25 million on the same day.

Offshore, the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary, designated in 2021, covers about 962 square miles of Lake Michigan off Ozaukee, Sheboygan, Manitowoc and Kewaunee counties, including the water off Belgium. The nearest marina is in Port Washington, about 13 minutes south.

Belgium's highest-priced property in October 2026 was land, not a lake house. On October 5, 2026, the public Belgium search page listed a 2004 house of 4,300 square feet with three bedrooms on Six Mile Road at $2,500,000. The listing gives a lot of about 1.54 million square feet, roughly 35.4 acres, and describes a heated 40-by-81-foot building with a hydraulic aircraft door attached to a second 40-by-54-foot building, orchards, cropland and an airstrip half a mile away. OpenStreetMap places Six Mile Road with a Belgium 53004 address in the Town of Belgium; the Census geocoder did not match the address, so I did not confirm the parcel's municipality.

That listing is an outlier. Everything else on the page was under $500,000, and the next-highest was a pending house on Horseshoe Court in the village at $499,990. The Zillow top-tier index for ZIP 53004, the upper third of homes, was $600,169 in August 2026, up 6.7% in a year. That is the honest center of Belgium's upper market: $600,000 to $1 million for a large house on real acreage, with an occasional property like the Six Mile Road one above it.

Acreage in the town comes with farmland rules. Much of the town is zoned A-1 Farmland Preservation, where the zoning section explains the 35-acre minimum, and owners can claim state farmland preservation tax credits. A buyer should ask whether the land is in that district, whether it carries any farmland preservation agreement, and whether it is assessed at agricultural use value, because a change of use can change the tax bill.

Zillow tracks Belgium as one area. Zillow's typical home value for Belgium was $414,195 in August 2026, up 6.4% from $389,282 a year earlier and about 8.8% over two years. That is above Port Washington, at $392,624, and below Ozaukee County as a whole, at $507,273. Zillow's index for ZIP 53004 was $399,988, up 6.8%.

Sales are few. Redfin's monthly data counts 32 sales in Belgium in the 12 months through May 2026, against 34 the year before. Monthly medians ranged from $286,000 to $419,900. In April 2026 the median was $335,250 on four sales, with 34 days on market; in May it was $369,950 on two sales, with 40 days on market and homes selling at about 99% of list price.

The October 2026 listings fill in the middle. Village houses on Louvain Lane and Bastogne Court, of about 1,600 square feet with three bedrooms, were listed at $469,500 and $479,900, and two on Horseshoe Court at $494,990 and $499,990 (pending). Older village houses were lower: $385,000 pending on Hickory Street, $335,000 pending on Heritage Street and $295,000 on Main Street. A one-acre lot on County Road B was listed at $86,000.

With two to five sales a month, one sale moves the Redfin median by tens of thousands of dollars, so I don't read a trend into a single month. Zillow estimates every home; Redfin reports what closed. The best guide to a specific house is the nearest comparable sales in the same municipality. For context across northern Ozaukee County, Zillow's August 2026 top-tier index was $600,169 for Belgium's ZIP 53004, $590,204 for Fredonia's 53021 and $547,860 for Port Washington's 53074, so Belgium's upper third of homes is valued slightly above its neighbors', largely because of the town's acreage. If you're running numbers, my guide to how much house you can afford in 2026 is a good place to start.

Wisconsin taxes run on assessed value. The local assessor sets it, the Department of Revenue sets an equalized value, and the ratio between them is the assessment level. The rate, in dollars per $1,000, applies to the assessed value. In Belgium, the assessment level matters as much as the rate.

The village is close to normal. The DOR's 2025 report puts its assessment level at 0.88, and Ozaukee County's 2025 rate sheet gives a ratio of 0.8753. The whole village is in the Cedar Grove-Belgium School District, and the net rate is $13.34 per $1,000 of assessed value, with a lottery credit of $170.09 and a first dollar credit of $56.70. On a $414,195 house, Zillow's typical Belgium value, the assessed value would be about $362,500, and the 2025 bill about $4,838, or about $4,611 after both credits for a primary residence, roughly 1.11% of price.

The town is different. The DOR puts its assessment level at 0.69, and the county ratio is 0.6937, meaning town assessments sit at about 69% of market. The town's rate depends on the school district: $11.79 per $1,000 in Cedar Grove-Belgium, $12.86 in Northern Ozaukee and $13.44 in Random Lake. On the same $414,195 house, assessed at about $287,300, the bill after credits would be about $3,160, $3,451 or $3,593. On the $2.5 million Six Mile Road listing, if it is in the Cedar Grove-Belgium area, the bill would be about $20,440 before credits.

The low town assessment level is worth understanding. When a municipality's assessments fall well below market, a revaluation is likely at some point. A revaluation raises assessed values and lowers the rate, so the town's total levy doesn't change, but individual bills can shift, especially for properties whose value has risen faster than average. The DOR's town-wide effective rate on full value is 0.859%, against 1.168% in the village. The town's municipal levy is about $2.00 per $1,000 of assessed value; the village's is about $5.33.

The Ozaukee Press reported on June 10, 2026 that the village borrowed $2.945 million at 3.86% for sewer and water main work, adding about 16 cents per $1,000 to its rate. The lottery credit applies only to a primary residence, and Wisconsin's real estate transfer fee is $0.30 per $100 of value. This is general information, not tax advice.

The Town of Belgium writes its own zoning. Its zoning ordinance, adopted in 1966 and amended through June 1, 2026, sets the rules that keep the town agricultural.

The A-1 Farmland Preservation District covers land designated for farmland preservation in the town and county plans and is certified under Chapter 91 of the Wisconsin Statutes, so owners can claim state farmland preservation tax credits. The ordinance states that agriculture is the highest and best use of that land and that farm odors, noise, dust and mud are a normal part of the town. A new farm parcel requires 35 contiguous acres under the same ownership, and the A-2 General Agricultural District also uses 35 acres. A farm residence can be split off on as little as 1.5 acres if the remaining farm keeps at least 35 contiguous acres.

The R-1 Single-Family Residential District requires lots of at least 1.5 acres and 150 feet wide, a maximum height of 35 feet and at least 1,200 square feet of living area. In the C-2 Upland Conservancy overlay, residential lots must be at least 5 acres. The town also has commercial, industrial, park and lowland conservancy districts, and a land division ordinance updated in 2025.

For a buyer, this zoning has two sides. It protects the open land around a country house, which is much of the appeal. It also means that splitting off a lot for a second house, or building a non-farm house on farmland, is hard. I'd confirm the zoning district, any buildable-parcel status and any farmland preservation agreement before buying land in the town.

Because the Town of Belgium is unincorporated, its Lake Michigan shore and its rivers and creeks fall under Ozaukee County's shoreland chapter, Chapter 19, dated March 4, 2026. The chapter applies within 1,000 feet of lakes and within 300 feet of navigable rivers and streams, or to the edge of the floodplain if that is farther.

On Lake Michigan, the county's bluff rules apply wherever there is a bluff. New buildings and septic systems in a bluff area must sit the greater of 75 feet from the bluff edge or a stable-slope line of 2.5 feet horizontal for every foot of bluff height, measured from the toe of the bluff. Small accessory structures can be no closer than 40 feet to the bluff top. Ravines need a 75-foot setback, reducible to 40 feet with an engineering report. Wikipedia describes the town's coastline as lined with sand and gravel beaches, so the bluff height and the setback will vary by lot.

The general shoreland setback from the ordinary high-water mark of navigable water is 75 feet, with a reduced setback allowed in some cases between existing houses. Impervious surface on regulated shoreland lots is capped at 15%, or up to 30% with a permit and mitigation. Those rules matter for lots along the Onion River, Sauk Creek and Sucker Creek as well as the lake.

The village runs its own water and sewer. Its website lists online utility bill payment and a 2026 utility and street reconstruction project on East Lane, West Lane, Antoine Street and part of Park Street, and the June 2026 borrowing the Ozaukee Press reported pays for sewer and water main replacement on those streets plus water main loop work. When I look at a village house, I'd ask for the utility bills and whether the street has been or will be reconstructed, since special assessments can be added to the tax bill.

In the town, expect a private well and septic system on most parcels, and confirm it on every listing. On a farm parcel, I'd budget for a water test, a septic evaluation, the county permit records and an inspection of any outbuildings.

Fire service comes from the Belgium Fire Department, which the village and the town fund together. Wikipedia notes that the department relies on the Village of Fredonia's fire department for ambulance service. The village also runs a recycling center, curbside garbage and recycling, brush and leaf collection, and allows golf carts, ATVs and UTVs under its rules, according to its services page.

The village is entirely in the Cedar Grove-Belgium Area School District, a K-12 district whose schools are all in Cedar Grove, in Sheboygan County, just north of Belgium. Cedar Grove-Belgium Elementary, K4 through 4, enrolled 310." Cedar Grove-Belgium Middle School, grades 5 through 8, enrolled 252. Cedar Grove-Belgium High School enrolled 265." The district enrolled 850.

The town is split among three districts. The DOR's school apportionment shows about $208 million of the town's value in Cedar Grove-Belgium, $192 million in Northern Ozaukee and $30 million in Random Lake.

The Northern Ozaukee School District's schools are in Fredonia. The Random Lake School District's schools are in Random Lake, in Sheboygan County.

In the town, the school district is set by the parcel and also sets the tax rate, so confirm both on the tax bill and with the district before counting on a school.

I-43 runs north-south past the village with Exit 107, and it is the only fast road south. I ran free-flow routes on the OSRM routing engine, with no traffic, from the village center on October 5, 2026. Treat them as best-case estimates.

Port Washington and its marina are about 10 miles and 13 minutes south. Sheboygan is about 21 miles and 28 minutes north, and Cedarburg about 20 miles and 29 minutes. Downtown Milwaukee is about 37 miles and 47 minutes, and Milwaukee's airport about 44 miles and 57 minutes.

To Illinois, Belgium is well past 90 minutes. Vernon Hills is about 97 miles and 119 minutes in free-flow traffic, downtown Chicago about 124 miles and 151 minutes, and O'Hare about 120 miles, with the router giving 162 minutes. For a Lake County, Illinois buyer, Belgium is a Milwaukee-area or Sheboygan-area home, not an Illinois commute.

There is no passenger rail in Belgium; the Union Pacific line beside the Interurban Trail carries freight. The nearest Chicago train is Amtrak's Hiawatha from the Milwaukee Intermodal Station, about 47 minutes away. Amtrak's schedule feed for the week of October 6, 2026 showed six weekday trains to Chicago at 99 to 112 minutes.

The village maintains six public parks, according to Wikipedia, with baseball and softball diamonds, basketball, tennis and volleyball courts, an ice rink, picnic shelters, playgrounds, soccer fields, a splash pad, a three-acre fenced dog park and walking trails.

The Ozaukee Interurban Trail, a paved rail trail of about 40 miles, passes through the village and the town; the Town of Belgium counts about six miles of it inside the town. South, it runs to Port Washington, Grafton, Cedarburg and Mequon and connects to the Oak Leaf Trail in Milwaukee County. North, it continues through Cedar Grove to Oostburg.

The lakeshore preserves are the bigger draw. Harrington Beach State Park has the beach, the quarry lake, trails and the campground, and Wikipedia notes it is one of two Wisconsin Important Bird Areas in Ozaukee County. The Forest Beach Migratory Preserve has trails, restored wetlands and a nature center. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Belgium and Cedar Grove waterfowl production areas are also in the town.

Belgium's own change is small and practical. The village's biggest 2026 project is the utility and street reconstruction on East Lane, West Lane, Antoine Street and part of Park Street, financed by the $2.945 million borrowing the Ozaukee Press reported on June 10, 2026, which matures in 2046. New houses continue in the village's subdivisions; the ACS counts 198 village homes built since 2010.

The town's zoning makes large-scale development unlikely. With nearly 16,000 acres under farmland preservation and 35-acre minimums in the agricultural districts, the town is set up to stay farmland.

The larger change is to the south. The Vantage data center campus under construction on Port Washington's north side, described in the Port Washington guide, is about 10 miles from the village, and the regional power-line plan to serve it is still before state regulators after American Transmission Company refiled in September 2026. For any Belgium parcel near the southern town line or I-43, I'd check the filed route maps before buying.

The Village of Belgium has a village marshal, and the Ozaukee County Sheriff's Office provides police service when the marshal is off duty, in emergencies and throughout the Town of Belgium. Fire service comes from the Belgium Fire Department. I don't characterize the safety of any town or neighborhood. Anyone who wants the data can ask the sheriff's office or look up its reported figures on the FBI Crime Data Explorer.

The village's median home was built in 1994, and the town keeps its land in large parcels.

Most of its shore is park or preserve, and no lakefront listing was public in October 2026. The top of the market is acreage, and the $2.5 million listing is an outlier. Town zoning makes new lots hard to create. The town's assessments sit at about 69% of market, so a revaluation could shift bills. The schools are in Cedar Grove, a short drive north. Vernon Hills is about 119 minutes away in free-flow traffic.

I'd pull the tax bill and confirm the municipality, the school district, the zoning district and the water and septic for the exact parcel before falling for a property.