Bloomfield, WI

Bloomfield began as a farm township. The Walworth County Historical Society dates it to 1844 and quotes an early description of "thirty-six square miles of varied and diversified country, well watered." The water is the story. The township holds five lakes, and in the 1920s two of them turned into resort communities aimed at Chicago.

Pell Lake came first. A 2011 state review of the village's incorporation lists the Pell Lake Property Owners Association as founded in 1925, and Pell Lake grew from a summer colony into a year-round community of more than 4,000 people by the time the village was proposed.

Lake Ivanhoe, about three miles to the north, dates to 1926.

The modern village is recent. After at least four earlier attempts to incorporate parts of the town, voters created the Village of Bloomfield on December 20, 2011, from about 12 square miles centered on Pell Lake. In 2024 the village and town signed a boundary agreement that moved most of the remaining town into the village. I explain what that means for buyers in the next section.

Two governments have carried the Bloomfield name since 2011, and that is the first thing to sort out on any listing. The Village of Bloomfield was carved out of the Town of Bloomfield in 2011. The 2011 Incorporation Review Board determination left the town with about 20.86 square miles, mostly farmland south of County Highway H and the Lake Ivanhoe area to the north.

That changed in 2024. The Town Board's published minutes show a joint public hearing on a boundary agreement with the village on May 20, 2024, attended by 70 people, at which the town attorney explained that this type of agreement does not require a referendum. The town chair told the hearing the town could not continue without raising its levy and borrowing. The minutes describe a "first phase" that left out some parcels next to the City of Lake Geneva, and the 2025 agendas carry an "update on 2nd phase boundary agreement."

The Department of Revenue's numbers show the effect. In the 2024 Town, Village and City Taxes report, the village had 4,834 people and the town 1,826. In the 2025 report, the village had 6,535 and the town 263. The village's website now lists 6,799 residents, 33.4 square miles and 84 miles of roads. A small Town of Bloomfield still exists with its own tax bill; the village tax page says not to combine village and town payments on one check.

Mailing addresses don't follow either line. Pell Lake has ZIP 53157. The Powers Lake and Tombeau Lake side uses Genoa City 53128, parts near the city use Lake Geneva 53147, and at least one Lake Ivanhoe address, on Dunbar Boulevard, is in Burlington 53105. When I look at a Bloomfield listing, the tax bill tells me village or town, and that drives the rate, the zoning office and the utility.

Bloomfield is really four places, and the first question I ask a buyer here is which one they mean. Price, utilities and even the school district change between them.

Pell Lake is the core. The 2011 state review describes it as a concentrated network of local streets connecting the elementary school, parks and a small business cluster with a grocery store, bank, restaurants and taverns. It is the part of Bloomfield on public water and sewer. Lots are small by lake-country standards, and many of the oldest houses began as summer cottages. Pell Lake itself is 86 acres, per the same review.

Lake Ivanhoe sits about 2.9 miles north of Pell Lake near Highway 50. It is a compact neighborhood of mostly single-family homes. The Census Bureau's 2020-2024 estimates for the Lake Ivanhoe census-designated place count 213 homes, all detached and nearly all owner-occupied, though the sample is small. At the 2024 boundary hearing, the village attorney told a questioner that water and sewer would not reach Lake Ivanhoe in his lifetime, so plan on a well and septic.

The Nippersink lakes are on the east side: the Walworth County shore of Powers Lake, plus Lake Benedict and Tombeau Lake. The 2011 review explains that these three are known together as the Nippersink lakes and that the Walworth side was included in the village while the Kenosha County side stayed in the towns of Randall and Wheatland. This is Bloomfield's lakefront luxury tier, and it uses a Genoa City mailing address.

The countryside is everything else: farmland, wetlands, the Bloomfield Wildlife Area and rural homes on acreage, much of it former town land that joined the village in 2024.

One caution first: the Census estimates for the village use its boundary before the 2024 boundary agreement, so they describe Pell Lake and the original village more than the new countryside.

Within that boundary, the 2020-2024 American Community Survey counts 2,004 housing units, and about 94% (1,883) are detached single-family houses. Of 1,615 occupied homes, 1,314, about 81%, are owner-occupied. About 222 units (plus or minus 157) are held for seasonal use, a reminder of Pell Lake's cottage roots, though far below the share on Powers Lake.

The age profile shows the cottage history. The village's median home was built in 1970. About 20% of homes (404) date to the 1950s, 11% (215) to before 1940 and another 10% (192) to the 1940s, so about 4 in 10 homes are more than 65 years old. The other bulge is the 2000s, with 360 homes, about 18%. Very little has been built since: 62 homes from the 2010s and none counted since 2020.

The ACS puts the median owner value at $236,100 (plus or minus $17,439) and the median gross rent at $1,265, against a county median value of $302,700. Nearly every occupied home in the old village heats with utility gas (1,537 of 1,615).

Each era has its own inspection list. A converted cottage can have a shallow foundation or crawlspace, additions from several decades, low ceilings and older wiring. I look closely at how and when it was winterized. A 2000s house is on its first or second roof and furnace. Out in the countryside, the age of the well and septic matters more than the age of the house. My home inspection checklist covers what to ask for.

Five lakes touch Bloomfield, and they are very different products. The 2011 state review put Powers Lake at 459 acres, Pell Lake at 86 acres, Lake Benedict at 78 acres, and Tombeau and Ivanhoe lakes at under 50 acres each. The Wisconsin DNR lists Powers Lake at 451 acres with a maximum depth of 33 feet and two public boat landings.

Each lake has its own caretakers. The 2011 review lists the District of Powers Lake, a lake management district created in 1985, and the Lake Benedict/Tombeau Lake District, created in 1996, both doing invasive species control, fish stocking and planning. Both show up as small lines on the 2025 Walworth County tax rates for the village: about $0.11 per $1,000 for Powers Lake and $0.19 for Benedict-Tombeau. Pell Lake is managed by a private property owners association dating to 1925 and a volunteer group called the Mudhens, which the review credits with weed cutting and maintaining the boat launches and beaches.

Pell Lake has a public beach, and the village posts its beach water testing; its site showed E. coli results from July through September 2026.

If you buy on any of them, state shoreland zoning applies within 1,000 feet of a lake. The minimum standards in NR 115.05 include a 75-foot building setback from the ordinary high-water mark, a 35-foot vegetative buffer and a 15% impervious surface baseline. The village's zoning administrator enforces its own shoreline and floodplain rules. For piers, the DNR's exemption rules allow a new pier up to 6 feet wide with a loading platform up to 200 square feet and two boat slips for the first 50 feet of frontage, with pre-2012 piers grandfathered. Local ordinances can add limits.

Bloomfield's luxury market is almost entirely on the Powers Lake shore and the Nippersink lakes. Pell Lake is not a luxury market, and I would rather say that plainly than dress it up.

The top of the Bloomfield shore is in the low millions. A 2014 lakefront house on Powers Lake Road, with 82 feet of frontage and 4,424 square feet, closed at $2,405,000; the listing gives Walworth County, a Genoa City address, and a 2022 tax bill of $28,686. Across the lake in Kenosha County's Town of Randall, a 1.8-acre lakefront house was listed at $4,900,000 on October 5, 2026. That listing is covered in my Genoa City guide.

The active Bloomfield listings I could see on October 5, 2026 show the next tier down. Movoto's Powers Lake-area page listed a five-bedroom house of 4,050 square feet on West Court at $1,275,000; Compass gives that property 11.06 acres. A four-bedroom house on Tombeau Road was at $1,089,900 after a $9,100 price cut, and a three-bedroom house on Beech Boulevard at $850,000.

Below that sits the bulk of the market. The same page showed Bloomfield houses at $496,000, $349,900, $285,000, $235,000 and $185,000, the last a two-bedroom house of 760 square feet. Vacant lots ranged from $49,900 for 0.22 acres to $250,000 for 5.02 acres.

I separate three tiers on any lake. Lakefront has your own frontage and pier rights. Lake access means a deeded or association right to reach the water. Off-lake means you drive to a public landing or beach. On Pell Lake, many homes are near the water without owning frontage, and the listing language can blur that. I read the deed and the plat before I trust the word "lake" in a listing.

The data sources split Bloomfield in two, which actually helps. Zillow's home value index publishes a Pell Lake series and a separate Bloomfield series. In August 2026 Pell Lake's typical value was $296,395, up 4.4% from a year earlier and 13.3% over two years. Zillow's Bloomfield series was $515,199, up 10.1%. Zillow doesn't publish its boundaries, but the gap is consistent with the Bloomfield series weighting the larger rural lots and the Powers Lake shore. Walworth County as a whole was $411,444, up 4.4%.

Actual sales tell the same story. Redfin's public data counts 56 Bloomfield sales in the 12 months through May 2026, down from 67 the year before. Monthly medians mostly ran between $237,000 and $336,000, with one March 2026 sale at $712,450 standing alone. In May 2026 the median was $250,900 on five sales, with 49 median days on market and homes selling at about 102% of list price. Redfin's Pell Lake series, which overlaps it, counts 45 sales in the same 12 months.

So the honest summary is a market that mostly trades between about $200,000 and $400,000, with a thin top tier on the Nippersink lakes. Pell Lake is one of the lower-priced lake addresses within an hour of Lake County, Illinois. Zillow's August 2026 index for the City of Lake Geneva, five miles away, was $420,272.

With five to nine sales a month, one sale can swing a monthly median by $100,000, so I price from the comparable sales for the specific kind of house: a Pell Lake cottage, a 2000s house on a larger lot, or a lake parcel. 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 times a mill rate, and Bloomfield adds a twist: one village, three elementary school districts. The rate on your bill depends on which one your parcel is in.

The Walworth County Treasurer's 2025 rate sheet, printed January 19, 2026, lists these village rates per $1,000 of assessed value: Walworth County $2.61, the village $3.81, the Lake Geneva-Genoa City union high school $2.63, Gateway Technical College $0.60, and a school levy tax credit of $1.37 back off. Then one of three elementary districts: Lake Geneva J1 at $5.36, Genoa City J2 at $7.10 or Linn J4 at $2.92. My arithmetic puts the net rates at about $13.63 per $1,000 in J1, $15.37 in J2 and $11.19 in Linn J4, before the lake district levies of $0.11 (Powers Lake) or $0.19 (Benedict-Tombeau) where they apply.

Assessments are close to market. The DOR's 2025 report puts the village's assessment level at 0.89, and the village's assessor page says its contract assessor aims to keep values at 100%. Village-wide, the DOR's gross full-value rate is 1.391% and the effective rate after the school levy credit is 1.269%, lower than Genoa City's 1.560%.

A worked example. A $300,000 Pell Lake house assessed at the 0.89 village level would carry an assessed value of about $267,000. At the J1 rate, the 2025 bill would be about $3,640 before credits. The lottery and gaming credit, for a primary residence only, is computed by the DOR as a $27,000 credit value times the school tax rate; at J1 rates my arithmetic puts it near $216, for a net of about $3,424, or roughly 1.1% of price. The same house in J2 would be about $4,104 before credits. A second home gets no lottery credit.

On the Powers Lake shore, the $2,405,000 Powers Lake Road sale carried a 2022 bill of $28,686, about 1.2% of the sale price, on an assessment set before the sale. Wisconsin's transfer fee is $0.30 per $100 of value, normally paid by the seller. This is general information, not tax advice; your bill depends on the parcel, its school district, your credits and the assessor.

Whether a Bloomfield house has public water and sewer depends almost entirely on whether it's in Pell Lake. The Bloomfield Utility Department runs a water treatment plant on Pell Lake Drive and a wastewater treatment plant on County Road U, and bills quarterly, due on the 20th of January, April, July and October. The 2011 state review described the old Pell Lake Sanitary District as covering roughly 2.5 square miles between County Highway H and U.S. 12, with a plant designed to expand.

Outside that area, plan on a private well and septic. The 2011 review said all other development in Bloomfield was on individual wells, and the 2024 hearing minutes record the village attorney saying water and sewer would not reach Lake Ivanhoe in a resident's lifetime. Homes in Pioneer Estates near Lake Geneva are served by the City of Lake Geneva, per the same minutes.

The utility page posts the annual Consumer Confidence Reports from 2020 through 2025, the current water and sewer rate schedule dated December 16, 2025, a sewer rate increase notice and two DNR notices. I read the latest Consumer Confidence Report and the DNR notices with every buyer before an offer on a Pell Lake house, and I ask for the last year of utility bills.

On a well-and-septic house, I write a well water test and a septic inspection into the inspection period and ask for the septic permit and pumping history. Fire service is shared with the next village: Bloomfield-Genoa City Fire & Rescue runs from Clover Road in Pell Lake, and the Bloomfield Police Department is at the municipal center on Town Hall Road.

Bloomfield follows the Wisconsin pattern of K-8 districts feeding a union high school, and it has three K-8 districts inside one village. The 2011 state review said Lake Geneva J1 and Genoa City J2 split the old town roughly in half along a southwest-to-northeast line, with J1 covering the larger share. The 2025 tax sheet adds Linn J4 for part of the village.

Most Pell Lake addresses are in Lake Geneva Joint School District 1. Its elementary school for this area, Star Center Elementary at W1380 Lake Geneva Highway, is about a mile from the center of Pell Lake.

The southeast side, including the Powers Lake shore, is generally Genoa City J2: Brookwood Elementary and Brookwood Middle. Linn J4 runs Traver Elementary.

All three feed Badger High School in Lake Geneva, about 4.3 miles from Pell Lake in a straight line.

Assignment follows the parcel. The difference between J1 and J2 is also about $1.74 per $1,000 on the tax bill, so I confirm the district on the tax bill and with the district office before an offer.

U.S. 12 cuts through Bloomfield from northwest to southeast with an interchange at Pell Lake Road, per the 2011 state review. That one road does most of the work: northwest to Lake Geneva and Elkhorn, southeast through Genoa City to Richmond and Fox Lake, Illinois. Highways 50 and 120 and County Highways B, H and U fill in the rest.

I ran free-flow routes on the OSRM routing engine, which uses OpenStreetMap roads and no traffic, from Pell Lake on October 5, 2026. Treat these as best-case estimates:

From Pell Lake, Vernon Hills is about 36 road miles and 53 minutes. Downtown Chicago is about 69 miles and 97 minutes. O'Hare is about 57 miles, and the router gave 99 minutes. Downtown Milwaukee is about 55 miles and 74 minutes. Downtown Lake Geneva is about 8 miles and 15 minutes, which is where most errands go.

Coming from Lake County, Illinois, the comparison buyers usually make is with Lake Geneva itself. Pell Lake is about five miles closer to the state line and a fraction of the price, and the trade is that Geneva Lake is a 15-minute drive instead of a walk. Sunday-evening southbound traffic on U.S. 12 is the one thing to plan around.

Bloomfield has no rail service; the 2011 review notes there are no active rail lines or public transit in the area. The practical options are Metra terminals in Illinois. I counted trains in Metra's GTFS schedule data for the week of October 12, 2026.

Fox Lake, the end of the Milwaukee District North line, is about 17 road miles and 24 minutes from Pell Lake by the same free-flow router. It has 16 weekday trains to Chicago Union Station and 16 back, with morning rides of 88 to 93 minutes, and 9 trains each way on Saturdays and Sundays.

Antioch, on the North Central Service line, is about 18 road miles and 30 minutes away, with 7 weekday trains each way, rides of 92 to 103 minutes and no weekend service. Harvard, the end of the Union Pacific Northwest line, is about 21 road miles and 37 minutes west. Kenosha, on the Union Pacific North line, is about 32 road miles and an hour east, with 92-minute rides to Ogilvie.

A Bloomfield to Loop commute by train runs well over two hours door to door. For hybrid schedules it is workable; for five days a week, most people I talk to would drive to Fox Lake only as a fallback.

Bloomfield's amenities are the lakes and the open land. Pell Lake has the village's public beach, where the village posts summer water test results, and boat launches that the 2011 review credits the volunteer Mudhens with maintaining. Powers Lake has two public boat landings per the DNR, and Geneva Lake is about 15 minutes away for a bigger lake day.

The Bloomfield Wildlife Area, a state property, marks the northern edge of the original 2011 village, according to the incorporation review, which also describes wetlands and environmental corridors along the north, west and east branches of Nippersink Creek. East Branch Nippersink Creek is the outlet for Powers, Benedict, Tombeau and Pell lakes and flows southwest toward Genoa City.

Golf is close. Nippersink Golf Resort's 18-hole course is on Tombeau Road on the Nippersink lakes side, with a Genoa City address.

Day-to-day shopping is limited. The 2011 review listed a Pell Lake business cluster with a grocery store, bank, restaurants, taverns and service businesses, and noted that Lake Geneva, a few minutes away on Highway 50, carries most of the area's shopping. I would treat Lake Geneva as the main errand town for anyone buying here.

The biggest change in Bloomfield is governmental, and it isn't finished. The Town Board's 2025 agendas list an "update on 2nd phase boundary agreement," which, from the 2024 hearing minutes, concerns the parcels next to the City of Lake Geneva that were left out of the first phase. Until that is settled, a few parcels remain in the Town of Bloomfield with their own tax bill and board.

For a buyer, the merger mostly changes paperwork. Former town parcels now follow village ordinances, though the 2024 hearing minutes note the town already followed the village's ordinances. They also pay the village levy and get village services. At the hearing, one questioner asked whether his street would be widened to village standards and whether he would have to connect to water and sewer, and the village attorney's answer was that service would not reach his area in his lifetime. If road standards or utility extensions matter for a property you're considering, ask the village before you buy.

There is vacant land for building. On October 5, 2026, listings in Bloomfield included a 0.22-acre lot at $49,900, a 0.41-acre lot at $89,900, a 0.91-acre assembly of lots in the Lake Ivanhoe street grid at $119,900, and a 5.02-acre parcel at $250,000. The village's planning page posts a 2026 impact fee form, a new-construction coordination packet and a water-and-sewer new home packet, so budget for impact fees and connection costs on a Pell Lake lot.

Older plans are worth knowing about but not counting on. The 2011 review cited the town's 2005 smart growth plan, which recommended two more U.S. 12 interchanges at Bloomfield Road and Twin Lakes Road and the widening of County Highway H. I did not find a current project for either.

The Bloomfield Police Department, at the municipal center on Town Hall Road in Pell Lake, provides police service for the village, and fire and EMS come from Bloomfield-Genoa City Fire & Rescue on Clover Road. The Kenosha County side of Powers Lake is covered by the Kenosha County Sheriff. I don't characterize any town or neighborhood. If you want the data, ask the department, or look up any agency on the FBI's Crime Data Explorer.

Pell Lake gives you village water and sewer, a public beach and a small lake at one of the lowest price points in the Lake Geneva area. The Powers Lake shore gives you a real lakefront market from about $850,000 into the millions. The countryside gives you acreage.

The village is new and still settling its boundary, so the tax bill, zoning office and utility can all depend on details a listing won't show. Three school districts serve one village. Many Pell Lake houses are older cottages that need a close look at how they were winterized. Outside Pell Lake, you are on a well and septic. Errands mostly mean Lake Geneva. The village's 2025 effective rate of 1.269% sits between Genoa City's 1.560% and the Geneva Lake towns, such as the Town of Linn at 0.788%, in the same DOR report.

The one thing I would never skip here is pulling the tax bill for the exact parcel: village or town, school district, lake district and utility, before anyone falls for a view.