Cedarburg, WI

Cedarburg was built on water power. The city's history page dates the town's founding to the early 1840s and ties it to the power of Cedar Creek, which drops through the middle of the city. The mills that used that power are still the city's best-known buildings, and the local limestone they were built from sets the look of the whole downtown.

The National Register listings for Ozaukee County describe the two big ones. The Cedarburg Mill, listed in 1974, is a five-story gristmill built in 1855 by Frederick Hilgen and William Schroeder with walls of high-quality local limestone, monitor roofs and Greek Revival cornice returns. The Hilgen and Wittenberg Woolen Mill, listed in 1978, is a mill complex on Cedar Creek with an 1865 Greek Revival office and store, the main mill building, an 1893 dye house and 1896 powerhouses. It made yarns, flannels and blankets and ran until 1968.

The city says that when the woolen mill was built in 1864 it was the only woolen mill west of Philadelphia producing worsted yarns. Today the complex is the Cedar Creek Settlement, a collection of shops, artist studios, antique stores and restaurants.

Rail came next. Wikipedia's Cedarburg entries date the first train line, later part of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway, to 1870. The city's history page says the mills had all closed by the 1960s and that the city grew quickly after World War II with new subdivisions and commercial areas. Through all of it, more than 200 historic buildings were kept, and eight properties and districts in the city are on the National Register.

The downtown is a historic district on paper as well as in look. The Washington Avenue Historic District, on the National Register since 1986, covers much of old downtown. Its listing names the 1847 Cedarburg Brewery complex, the 1853 Greek Revival Schroeder house, the 1853 Stagecoach Inn, the 1870 Italianate Hoehn Furniture Store, the 1873 Groth's Hardware, the 1885 Queen Anne Weisler Hotel, the 1886 Washington House Inn, the 1894 Lincoln Public School and a 1926 pagoda-style filling station.

A second district is residential. The Columbia Historic District, listed in 1992, is the neighborhood northeast of downtown. Its listing includes an 1860 limestone tinsmith shop and cooperage, an 1865 Greek Revival limestone house, an 1869 Italianate house, an 1889 Queen Anne, a 1908 Craftsman, a 1925 bungalow and a 1931 Tudor Revival. That range of styles on a few blocks is a fair sample of the city's older housing. A small piece of a third district, Hamilton, crosses into the city from the town, per the city's historic properties page.

The local rules are what matter to an owner. The Landmarks Commission has the power to designate landmarks, landmark sites and historic districts within the city, and the city maps a Historic Preservation overlay zoning district alongside the B-3 central business zoning district. The city's code covers work on designated properties, so before buying a designated building or a house inside the overlay, I would read the code section, look at the city's map and talk to the planning office about what exterior changes need review.

There is also money for the work. The same city page lists federal and state historic tax credits, the city's façade improvement program and a city loan fund. The downtown district page defines the business district as properties within two blocks of Washington Avenue between Sheboygan Road and Spring Street and says the city's 2011 downtown master plan was being updated.

The Census Bureau's 2024 gazetteer gives the City of Cedarburg 4.921 square miles of land and 0.051 square miles of water. The Department of Revenue counted 12,976 people for 2025. The city sits about 22 road miles north of downtown Milwaukee, between Interstate 43 to the east and the farmland of the Town of Cedarburg to the north and west.

The most important fact for a buyer is that there are two Cedarburgs. The city is surrounded largely by the Town of Cedarburg, a separate municipality with a lower tax rate, larger lots, private wells and septic systems, and no sewer service of its own. Both use Cedarburg mailing addresses, and both are mostly in the Cedarburg School District. On October 5, 2026, I ran the coordinates of every house and lot on Movoto's Cedarburg page through the Census Bureau's geocoder: 22 were in the city and 18 in the town.

Addresses help, but they don't settle it. The city uses Ozaukee County grid addresses such as W63N645 Washington Avenue, and the city's grid address page asks owners to write them with no space. Most town listings I checked used ordinary street numbers, but not all city-labeled roads are in the city: one listing on Hamilton Road with a grid address was in the city and another with a plain number was in the town. The tax bill is what I trust.

The line between the two is now fixed for a while. The town's planning page says the city and town reached a cooperative boundary agreement in 2021 that sets a 20-year boundary and the areas the city can annex at an owner's request. My Town of Cedarburg guide covers the other side of that line.

I split the city into four areas when I talk about it, by age, lot size and housing type.

Downtown and the blocks around Washington Avenue are the oldest housing in the city: 1900s to 1920s houses on small lots within a walk of the mills, the creek and the shops. On October 5, 2026, a 1925 bungalow on 0.67 acres on Washington Avenue was listed at $629,900, a 1904 house on Saint John Avenue was under contract at $479,000, and a 1928 house on Hilbert Avenue was listed at $449,000.

The Columbia district and the streets northeast of downtown mix 1800s limestone houses with early 1900s houses along Bridge Road and Columbia Road. Two 1920s houses on Bridge Road were listed at $389,000 and $425,000 the same day.

The south end runs along Hamilton Road and Pioneer Road toward the town line. It holds some of the city's largest lots, including an all-brick house of about 5,200 square feet built in 1995 on 0.88 wooded acres on Hamilton Road, listed at $1,275,000, the highest-priced single-family listing in the city that day.

The north side is where the newer construction is, toward Highway 60 and Sheboygan Road. It includes Stone Lake Condominiums, built around a 27-acre former quarry lake, where 2025 units were listed or pending at $739,900 to $899,900 on October 5, 2026; Fairway Lane, where a 2024 house was under contract at $615,000; and the Glen at Cedar Creek and the planned Glen at Quarry Park.

The 2020-2024 American Community Survey counts 5,704 housing units in the city (plus or minus 366). About 3,566, or 63%, are detached single-unit houses. Another 264 are attached single-unit homes such as townhouses and side-by-side condos, and the rest are in buildings of two units or more, including about 367 homes in buildings of 50 units or more.

Of 5,445 occupied homes, 3,372, about 62%, are owner-occupied. The ACS puts the median owner-reported value at $422,000 (plus or minus $28,835), and estimates that only about nine owner-occupied homes in the city are valued at $1 million or more, within a margin larger than that number.

The age profile is spread out. The median home was built in 1977. About 652 homes date to before 1940, the downtown and Columbia stock. The 1960s added about 841 and the 1970s about 754, the postwar subdivisions. The 2010s added about 685, and about 149 have been built since 2020, mostly on the north side.

The Department of Revenue's 2025 equalized values show the city's tax base: $2.05 billion of its $2.56 billion in real estate is residential, about 80%, and $462 million is commercial. Land makes up about a quarter of the residential value.

Each era has its own inspection list. On a pre-1940 house I look at the foundation, the masonry and whether the knob-and-tube wiring and old plumbing have been replaced. Limestone and soft old brick need the right mortar when they are repointed, which matters inside the historic district too. On a 1960s or 1970s house it is the roof, windows, electrical panel and basement water. On a new condo, I read the association budget, reserves and rules, since monthly fees at Stone Lake were listed at $400.

The City of Cedarburg has an upper end, and it tops out around $1.3 million. On October 5, 2026, the highest-priced single-family listing in the city was the 1995 brick house on Hamilton Road at $1,275,000. The only higher city listing was a 2022 multi-unit building on Mill Street with about 6,000 square feet, listed at $1,499,999. The ACS counts no owner-occupied homes in the city valued at $1.5 million or more, within a margin of about 16 homes.

Zillow's top-tier index for the 53012 ZIP, which covers the city and much of the town and tracks the most expensive third of homes, was $778,280 in August 2026, up 6.2% in a year. That is the realistic band for a better house in the city: $700,000 to $1.3 million.

The estates are on the edges, in the Town of Cedarburg. The same day, the town had a 16-acre property with an 1870 farmhouse, barn and pond on Washington Avenue listed at $1,850,000, a 28-acre property with a 1989 ranch on Horns Corners Road at $1,550,000 and a six-acre wooded estate on the same road at $1,249,000. Those are covered in my Town of Cedarburg guide. For $2 million-plus property in Ozaukee County, the market is in Mequon, covered in my Mequon guide.

So Cedarburg is not a $2 million city. The appeal at the top end is a different kind of value: a large, well-built house within a walk or short drive of a preserved 1800s downtown, with acreage a few minutes away for those who want it.

Coming from Lake County, Illinois, the closest comparison I can draw is Libertyville or Lake Bluff: a historic downtown with newer neighborhoods around it. On price, Zillow's August 2026 typical value of $566,235 sits between Vernon Hills ($459,113) and Highland Park ($807,638).

Zillow's home value index put the typical City of Cedarburg home at $566,235 in August 2026, up 6.2% from a year earlier and 7.1% over two years. For comparison, Zillow's August 2026 values were $659,897 for Mequon, $460,062 for Grafton, $422,774 for Thiensville, $507,273 for Ozaukee County and $399,526 for Lake County, Illinois.

Zillow's index covers all homes, condos included, and Cedarburg's mix pulls it in both directions: older downtown houses on small lots sit below the index, and new condos and larger south-end houses sit above it.

The listing mix on October 5, 2026 shows the spread. Of the 22 city properties I placed inside the city limits, single-family houses ran from a 1955 house of about 920 square feet on Jackson Street at $325,000 to the Hamilton Road house at $1,275,000. Condos ran from $329,900 for a 1985 unit on Hampton Avenue to $899,900 for a new Stone Lake unit. Eleven of the 22 were already under contract or pending, which tells me the city is not sitting on inventory.

Because the new condos and the 1920s downtown houses are different products, I price a Cedarburg home from its own comparable sales: historic against historic, condo against condo, and newer subdivision against newer subdivision. 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, then subtract credits. The Ozaukee County Treasurer's 2025 rate sheet lays it out for the city.

For a city parcel in the Cedarburg School District, the 2025 gross rate was $17.28 per $1,000 of assessed value: $1.44 to the county, $7.05 to the city, $7.84 to the school district and $0.96 to the technical college. The state school levy credit takes off $1.48, for a net rate of $15.80 per $1,000. A small sliver of the city is in the Mequon-Thiensville School District, where the net rate was $16.61. The county puts the city's assessment ratio at about 0.797, so assessments sat near 80% of market value, which matches the Department of Revenue's 2025 assessment level of 0.80. On market value, the DOR's effective rate for the city is 1.26%.

Two more credits come off a primary residence: the 2025 lottery and gaming credit was $168.75 and the first dollar credit $56.25 in the Cedarburg School District.

A worked example. A house at Zillow's typical $566,235 would be assessed at about $451,553. At $15.80 per $1,000 the 2025 tax comes to about $7,134, and after both credits the net bill is about $6,909, or 1.22% of value. I checked this method against the 2025 tax figure on the Hamilton Road listing and it matched to the dollar. A second home loses the lottery credit.

Two background points help when reading a city tax bill. The city did a market update revaluation in 2022, its first in 17 years, so assessments have drifted below market since then. And the city's TIF and mill rate FAQ explains that growth inside its tax incremental districts can push the rate up for properties outside them until the districts close. Wisconsin's real estate transfer fee is $0.30 per $100 of value. This is general information, not tax advice; your bill depends on the parcel, its assessment and your credits.

Cedarburg owns its own power company. Cedarburg Light and Water is a locally owned electric and water utility founded in 1901 that celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2026. Its electric utility page says it serves more than 7,200 electric customers in the city and part of the town, through three substations and more than 256 miles of line, and the utility says its electric rates are lower than those in most investor-owned utility territories. For a buyer, that is a monthly cost to compare when weighing a city house against one served by a different utility.

City houses are on public water and sewer. The city runs its own Water Recycling Center on Park Lane, and its 2025 planning studies included a wastewater treatment plant facility study, so sewer rates and capital costs are worth watching. On any older house, a sewer lateral scope is a cheap check.

One environmental site is worth knowing about. The city's Amcast page describes two former die-casting properties, operated from 1940 to 2005, that were added to the EPA's National Priorities List in 2009 for PCB-contaminated soil and building materials and contaminated sediments, including in Wilshire Pond. The TID 4 page places the district near Johnson Avenue and Hamilton Road. The city says redevelopment is delayed until the EPA cleanup is done and is envisioned as multi-family housing with green space. On a house near the site, I would read the EPA's community involvement plan and ask how the cleanup schedule affects the street.

Stormwater is managed by the city under a state permit. On a house near Cedar Creek I would still check the FEMA flood map and ask about past water in the basement.

Almost all of the city is in the Cedarburg School District. The Department of Revenue's 2025 apportionment puts about $2.44 billion of the city's value in the district, about 55% of the district's tax base, with the Town of Cedarburg the next largest piece at about 36%. Only about $4.5 million of city value sits in the Mequon-Thiensville district.

The district is also planning for growth. The city's 2025 and 2026 planning reports include a district community growth and enrollment study done alongside the city's land use plan.

Elementary assignment follows the address. The Hamilton Road listing named Westlawn and the Washington Avenue bungalow named Parkview, and both named Webster Middle and Cedarburg High. I confirm the assigned schools with the district for each house before an offer.

Cedarburg is a Milwaukee-area city. Highway 60 runs east to Interstate 43, and Washington Avenue and Wauwatosa Road run south toward Mequon and Milwaukee.

I ran free-flow routes on the OSRM routing engine, which uses OpenStreetMap roads and no traffic, on October 5, 2026, from City Hall on Washington Avenue. Treat these as best-case estimates. Downtown Milwaukee is about 22 road miles and 35 minutes, and Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport about 28 miles and 45 minutes. Lake Forest is about 79 miles and 101 minutes, Vernon Hills about 82 miles and 106 minutes, downtown Chicago about 108 miles and 139 minutes, and O'Hare about 105 miles and 150 minutes.

That is well past 90 minutes from Lake County, Illinois, and I would rather say so. For property within an hour of Lake County, my Kenosha and Somers guides cover the closest Wisconsin options.

For rail, Amtrak's Hiawatha leaves the Milwaukee Intermodal Station, about 35 minutes from City Hall. Amtrak's schedule feed for the week of October 6, 2026 shows six southbound trains on weekdays and five on Sundays, with a 99-minute ride to Chicago Union Station. The Milwaukee Airport station is about 47 minutes away.

There is no commuter bus. Ozaukee County Transit ended the Ozaukee County Express on June 28, 2024 and now runs a Shared Ride Taxi service daily. The Ozaukee Interurban Trail runs through the city on the old interurban line and connects south to Thiensville and Mequon and north to Grafton.

Traffic is a planning issue too. The city's 2025 planning work included a north end traffic study, and the city and town jointly commissioned a 2025 traffic and access study of Highway 60 near Horns Corners Road, Washington Avenue to Bridge Road and Sheboygan Road.

Cedar Creek is the city's main outdoor feature, and the city is building a walkway along it. The Creekwalk page says the Cedar Creek Walkway has been built in stages since 1994 toward a continuous trail from Boy Scout Park to Cedar Creek Park, with more than $900,000 of city funding between 2006 and 2015. The next section, planned for 2026 and 2027, would fill a gap downtown at a cost of $2.2 million, funded by $750,000 of city borrowing, $250,000 of park impact fees and $1.2 million of private donations and grants. The city puts the borrowing at about $30 a year for the average home.

The Interurban Trail runs through the city for biking and walking, and the city has a community pool, parks and a recreation department. The downtown itself is a draw, with restaurants, shops, galleries and the Cedar Creek Settlement in the old woolen mill. The city's history page notes that it hosts festivals and events through the year that bring in visitors, so on a house a block or two off Washington Avenue I'd look at parking and event-day traffic.

The covered bridge is just outside the city. Ozaukee County's Covered Bridge Park, about three miles north in the Town of Cedarburg, has what the county calls the sole survivor of more than 40 covered bridges that once stood in Wisconsin, built in 1876 and now open to pedestrians only. The town's Pleasant Valley Park has mountain bike and cross-country ski trails. Both are covered in my Town of Cedarburg guide.

For a bigger city day, downtown Milwaukee is about 35 minutes south, and Thiensville's river parks are about 15 minutes south; my Thiensville guide covers them.

Growth is the city's biggest policy debate, and 2026 settled one big piece of it.

The largest proposal was shelved. Neumann Developments proposed what the News Graphic described in March 2026 as a 481-unit, 214-acre development on the north side of Highway 60 west of Sheboygan Road, including the former Grob Airport property. By June it had been cut to 394 single-family lots, per TMJ4, and some of the land would have had to be annexed from the town. In September 2026, TMJ4 reported that the Common Council denied the annexation, putting the project on hold, while the site remains part of the city's Smart Growth plan. The mayor told the station the city wants growth within a 1% to 1.6% annual range.

Smaller projects are moving. In November 2025 the News Graphic reported a plan for 24 single-family homes on 11.53 acres east of Stone Lake Condominiums, the Glen at Quarry Park, with lots from 10,530 to 19,300 square feet against a 12,000-square-foot minimum in the Rs-3 zone. Stone Lake itself had 2025 units for sale on October 5, 2026. The same report said the Plan Commission approved an 86,700-square-foot spec industrial building in the Highway 60 Business Park.

Downtown and roads are changing too. The city's South Washington Avenue reconstruction, including new signals at Pioneer and Lincoln, is scheduled to finish by November 6, 2026. The Creekwalk extension is planned for 2026 and 2027. In June 2026 the News Graphic reported that the 8.69-acre Circle B Recreation property on Highway 60 sold for under $2 million, with the new owners hoping to keep it a bowling center. The city is also studying whether to build a combined police and fire building or refurbish its current ones, per its public safety facility page.

The paperwork behind those decisions is public. The city's 2025 and 2026 planning reports page lists an updated Smart Growth comprehensive land use plan running to 2050, a park and open space plan, a long-range financial management plan, a public safety building needs assessment, a wastewater treatment plant facility study, the north end traffic study and a housing report, with a joint city and town bicycle and pedestrian plan due at the end of 2026. Before buying near an empty parcel or on a busy road, I read the land use map in that plan to see what the city expects to go next door.

The city has its own Cedarburg Police Department at W75N444 Wauwatosa Road, with officers on duty around the clock. Fire and EMS come from the Cedarburg Fire Department, shared with the Town of Cedarburg, which reports 12 full-time and 60 paid-on-call members and 1,581 calls in 2025; city and town voters approved added funding in an April 2024 referendum. I don't characterize any town or neighborhood. Anyone who wants the data can ask the department or look up any agency on the FBI's Crime Data Explorer.

The net tax rate, about $15.80 per $1,000 of assessed value in 2025, is higher than the town's $10.97 because the city carries its own police, utilities and streets. The top of the city market is about $1.3 million; true estates are in the town or Mequon. Older houses near downtown sit on small lots, and anything inside a historic district or designated as a landmark needs a careful read of the city's rules. Highway 60 traffic is a known issue, and growth is a live debate. And by the router's estimate, Lake County, Illinois is well over 90 minutes away.

The one thing I would never skip here is confirming city or town for the exact parcel, and with it the rate, the school, the utility and whether sewer is available, before anyone falls for a porch.