Chenequa, WI

The village's name means pine. The village's own history page ties it to the white pine groves on the east shore of Pine Lake, which are unusual this far south in Wisconsin.

The resort era began early. The Encyclopedia of Milwaukee dates the start of Pine Lake's turn toward recreation to the mid-1850s. A rail line through northern Waukesha County in the 1870s made the trip from Milwaukee easy, and summer houses went up along the shore. Property owners formed the Pine Lake Yacht Club in 1890, and the club still runs a race calendar and sailing school, according to the village's lake groups page.

Chenequa split from the Town of Merton in 1928. Wikipedia's village entry records that summer-home owners pushed for incorporation so they could have their own police department, that the Town of Merton sued to stop it, and that a court cleared the way in January 1928. The Encyclopedia of Milwaukee adds that Highway 16 improved car access in the 1920s, and that Interstate 94 in the 1960s cut commute times enough for many summer houses to become year-round homes. That is when the village shifted from a resort into a place people lived all year.

Two modern details explain how the village looks today. It has been named a Tree City USA every year since 1985, per the village. And its zoning code, covered below, has kept lots large for decades, which is why there is so little new subdivision and so much woodland between houses.

Chenequa sits about 30 miles west of downtown Milwaukee, between Hartland and Oconomowoc, in the part of Waukesha County known as Lake Country. Wikipedia puts the village at 4.63 square miles, of which 1.17 square miles is water. It takes in all of Pine Lake, the western part of Beaver Lake, the southern part of North Lake and small Cornell Lake.

Pine Lake is the center of it. The Wisconsin DNR lake page lists Pine Lake at 711 acres with a maximum depth of 85 feet and describes the water as very clear. The village rounds it to 703 acres. The DNR lists Beaver Lake at 313 acres and 46 feet deep, and North Lake at 440 acres and 78.4 feet deep.

The village is almost entirely houses. The opening section of the village zoning code describes the village as almost entirely residential, says business needs are met by nearby towns, and that there is no municipal water or sewer system. The 2020-2024 Census ACS counts 284 housing units. Of those, 271 are single-family detached homes, about 95%. Of the 224 occupied homes, 211 are owner-occupied. Another 49 units are classified as seasonal or recreational, about 17% of the total. The survey's margins of error are wide in a village this small, so treat these as approximate.

The roads to know are State Highway 83, which runs north and south through the village, State Highway 16 along its southern edge, and County Road K, where the village hall and police department sit. From Lake County, Illinois, the closest comparison I can give people is a village where every house sits on a lot the size of a small estate, and there is no downtown at all.

With 284 housing units and owners who hold for years, the right house may not come up in a given season, and some of the best sales never appear in public reporting until they close.

Chenequa does not have subdivisions in the Illinois sense. It has shorelines, and a ring of large wooded parcels behind them. The useful way to search it is by lake, and then by whether the parcel touches the water. In this village that second question is more important than almost anywhere I can think of, because the zoning code gives lake access only to lakefront owners (more on that in the lot rules section).

Pine Lake is the main market. Its shoreline is ringed by private lakefront parcels, most of them multiple acres, and the reported eight-figure sales in this area have all been on it. Beaver Lake's western shore and North Lake's southern end are inside the village too, and each has its own boating rules and its own price level. Cornell Lake is small and mostly a view and a nature setting.

Behind the shorelines sit the off-lake parcels, which under current rules must be at least 5 acres if newly created. These are wooded estates along roads like County Road K and County Road C.

It is the single question that moves price most in this village.

The Pine Lake record was set in the fall of 2022. A seven-bedroom, 7.5-bath home on Pine Lake sold on October 31, 2022, for $15 million, plus another $1 million for furnishings, boats, vehicles and the pier, for a total of $16 million. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (November 2022) called it the most expensive home sale in the Milwaukee metro that year, and noted an infinity pool over the lake and a separate guest wing. Milwaukee Magazine (February 2023) put the house at about 10,000 square feet, said the buyer paid cash, and quoted the listing broker saying that, apart from a handful of major estates on Lake Geneva, it was the most expensive home ever sold in southeast Wisconsin by a wide margin.

The sales below the record tell you more about the normal top of the market. BizTimes reported in August 2025 that a 12,000-square-foot Pine Lake home built around 1989, with seven bedrooms, seven full and two half baths, a four-car garage and a barn on 3.8 acres, sold for $8.75 million. In June 2022, BizTimes reported a five-bedroom Pine Lake home sold for $5.5 million against an assessed value of $2.56 million; it had last sold in 2012 for about $2 million.

The most instructive sale is from September 2021. BizTimes reported that an 1897 house of 3,912 square feet on 3 acres of Pine Lake sold for $7.25 million, about a year after the sellers bought a larger 7-acre parcel for roughly $2.03 million and split it. The house was assessed at $1.55 million. On Pine Lake, the land and the frontage carry the price, and the house can be almost incidental.

Here is the honest price picture in three tiers. Pine Lake lakefront is the $5 million-plus market at the top, with smaller or older frontage parcels trading lower; the 2019 Treasure Island Drive sale at $2.1 million is the low end of what I found in public reporting, and it is seven years old. Beaver Lake and North Lake frontage trade below Pine Lake. A Lake Country brokerage's March 2026 comparison put typical ranges at $1 million to $3 million-plus on Pine Lake, $500,000 to $900,000 on Beaver Lake and $500,000 to $1.5 million on North Lake, though those ranges cover each whole lake and the Pine Lake figure sits well below the reported sales above. Off-lake estates are the third tier: in October 2026, Prestige Realty listed a 4,263-square-foot home on 5 wooded acres on County Road K at $1,395,000. I can't give you a sourced median for each tier from public data, and I won't guess one.

The Lake County, Illinois buyers I talk to who look north at Wisconsin lake property usually ask first about Lake Geneva. Pine Lake is the other name that comes up at this price, and the first questions are the same: how many feet of frontage, and what can I build.

Chenequa's zoning code is the most important document a buyer here will read, because it sets what every parcel can become. These are the rules in Chapter 6 as posted by the village, with amendments through June 2025.

Lot size comes first. A new or modified lot that does not touch a lake must have at least 5 acres and an average width of 200 feet. A lot on a lake must average at least 150 feet wide for each lake it touches, and its acreage depends on its frontage. The table in Section 6.6 requires 2 acres with 200 feet of frontage or more, 2.5 acres at 190 to 199 feet, 3 acres at 180 to 189, 3.5 acres at 170 to 179, 4 acres at 160 to 169, and 4.5 acres at 150 to 159 feet. Frontage is measured along the natural shoreline. The code includes worked examples, including a 2.3-acre parcel with about 85 feet of frontage that cannot be divided because it falls short on both counts.

Lake access is the rule that surprises Illinois buyers. Section 6.6 says no land may be subdivided, sold, leased or burdened with an easement that gives lake access to more than one owner for every 200 feet of frontage (150 feet with the larger lot sizes above), and that only people owning or leasing lots on a lake, and their occasional guests, have access to it. There are no deeded lake-access lots or shared association piers to buy into here. If a parcel does not touch the water, it does not come with lake rights.

Then the house. The code requires at least 2,000 square feet of living area for a one-story home and 2,500 for two stories, with at least 1,500 on the first floor. Houses must sit 75 feet back from the lake and 75 feet from the street, at least 50 feet from a neighbor's house, and accessory buildings and recreational facilities 100 feet from a neighbor's house. If the lakeside elevation of a structure exceeds 4,000 square feet, the lake setback becomes 100 feet. Houses over 13,000 square feet must sit 125, 150 or 175 feet from the lake depending on size, with wider side yards. Height is 35 feet by right, up to 40 feet on lakefront and 45 feet off the lake with extra side yard, and never more than three stories.

The first 75 feet from the water is a shoreline buffer. Inside 30 feet you may have a stairway, a walkway no wider than 4 feet and marine railways; between 30 and 75 feet you may add uncovered patios and terraces. Existing nonconforming houses in the buffer may be modified without adding footprint, living area or height.

Rentals are limited. Since April 2021 the code bans renting a home for six consecutive days or fewer. Stays of 7 to 28 days are allowed with a state tourist rooming house license and a village rental license that costs $25 a year. If you are counting on weekend rental income, Chenequa will not provide it.

For the full picture, the village's building code adds permit rules for land disturbance, fences, driveways, pools and outdoor lighting. Waukesha County's shoreland ordinance covers unincorporated towns and the Village of Lac La Belle, so in Chenequa it is the village code that governs the shoreline. Confirm the current versions with the village before you write an offer.

Chenequa is too small for the usual market statistics. Zillow publishes no home value index for the village, and with only a handful of sales in a typical year, any monthly median would swing on one house. So here is what the public numbers do say.

The 2020-2024 Census ACS puts the median value of owner-occupied homes at $1,402,800. Owners valued 85 of the 211 owner-occupied homes, about 40%, at $2 million or more. The survey has a wide margin of error here, about $410,000 either way on the median, and it counts only year-round homes, so it understates where the lakefront trades.

The state's numbers point the same way. The Wisconsin DOR's 2025 Town, Village and City Taxes report lists Chenequa's total full value, the state's estimate of market value for all taxable property, at $791,128,600. Divided by the 284 housing units in the ACS, that is about $2.8 million of taxable value per home, by my arithmetic. It is a rough figure because it includes land and the few non-residential parcels, but it is a fair sign of how much of the village's value sits in large lakefront parcels.

For a sense of the surrounding market, Zillow's typical home value for August 2026 was $2,082,456 in the neighboring Village of Oconomowoc Lake, up 12.1% from August 2025, with a top-tier value of $4,364,571. It was $766,469 in Delafield and $672,143 in Hartland, and $677,105 across the Hartland 53029 ZIP code that much of Chenequa uses for mail, per Zillow's public data. Those figures are not Chenequa's; they bracket it.

House age is mixed. The ACS counts 54 homes, about 19%, built in 1939 or earlier, and 54 built since 2000. Older lake houses on big lots are common, and so are teardowns and rebuilds, which is part of why a house's assessed value can sit far below what the parcel sells for.

I'm not using MLS statistics on this page. Wisconsin sold data comes through a different MLS than the Illinois one I work in, and village-wide medians for a place this size are noise. For a specific house, the comparable sales on the same lake are the only numbers worth using.

Coming from Lake County, Illinois, the tax bill is the first thing people compare, and Chenequa compares well. Wisconsin bills are built from a mill rate, the dollars of tax per $1,000 of value. The DOR's 2025 report, covering taxes levied in 2025 and collected in 2026, shows $7,208,188 in total property tax across Chenequa. That is a gross rate of about $9.11 per $1,000 of full value, and an effective rate of about $8.13 after the state school levy credit. The same report shows the village's assessments at 95% of full value, so assessed values on bills run slightly below the state's market estimate.

Those are village-wide averages, and the real rate depends on the parcel's K-8 school district. Chenequa is split among four of them, all feeding Arrowhead Union High School. By the DOR's figures, Lake Country holds about 34% of the village's taxable value, Swallow about 32%, Stone Bank about 28% and North Lake about 6%. The Department of Public Instruction's 2025-26 mill rates are 2.50 for Stone Bank, 3.19 for Lake Country, 3.37 for Swallow and 4.17 for North Lake, plus 1.84 for Arrowhead. The gap between Stone Bank and North Lake is about $1.67 per $1,000.

Here is a worked example. A $5,000,000 Pine Lake home at the village's 2025 effective rate of $8.13 per $1,000 would carry about $40,650 a year. The district line could move that by roughly $8,350 in either direction between the lowest and highest K-8 rates. For comparison, Ownwell's data for Lake Forest, Illinois shows a median effective rate of 1.87%, which on the same $5,000,000 would be about $93,500. Next door, the Village of Oconomowoc Lake's 2025 effective rate was about $9.61 per $1,000 on the same DOR report, and the Village of Merton's about $8.39.

Two Wisconsin credits come off the bill afterward. The lottery and gaming credit applies only to a Wisconsin resident's primary residence and does not apply to vacation homes. For 2025-26 it is figured on up to $27,000 of value, per the DOR's November 2025 notice, times the school tax rate, which works out to roughly $120 to $160 in Chenequa by my arithmetic. The first dollar credit applies to every improved parcel. Both are small next to a lakefront bill.

When you sell, Wisconsin charges a real estate transfer fee of $0.30 per $100 of value, or $3 per $1,000. On a $5,000,000 sale that is $15,000. On the $15 million real estate portion of the 2022 record sale it would be $45,000.

This is general information, not tax advice. Your actual bill depends on the parcel, the assessment, the school district and the credits you qualify for.

Each lake in Chenequa has its own rules, set in Chapter 4 of the village code, updated in July 2026. On Pine Lake, boats must stay at slow-no-wake speed within 200 feet of shore and within 100 feet of swimmers, canoes, rafts and anchored boats. The daytime limit is 45 mph from sunrise to sunset, and the whole lake is slow-no-wake from sunset to sunrise. Water skiers and towed riders must stay 100 feet from swimmers, boats, rafts and piers, and towing is banned from sunset to sunrise. Cars, trucks and snowmobiles are banned on Pine Lake's ice.

North Lake has a 35 mph maximum at all times and is slow-no-wake from an hour after sunset to an hour before sunrise. Beaver Lake's rules are adopted jointly with the Town of Merton, with a night slow-no-wake rule and a 3 mph cap in Turtle Bay. Every lake has an emergency slow-no-wake rule at high water; on Beaver Lake it applies above an elevation of 910.2 feet. Cornell Lake's chapter bans vehicles on the ice.

Wake boats get special attention on Pine Lake. The village's Lake Management Committee publishes 10 voluntary guidelines that ask wake surfers to stay 200 feet from shore, piers and moored boats, to run only in water deeper than 20 feet, and to stay out of shallow bays and weed beds. They are voluntary, but the page says all state and village boating ordinances will be enforced, and police survey boats at the landing Thursday through Sunday.

Piers follow state law. The Wisconsin DNR Pier Planner (April 2026) says a new pier needs no DNR permit if it is no more than 6 feet wide, has a loading platform of 200 square feet or less, and reaches only to the 3-foot depth or the depth needed to moor a boat. It allows two boat slips for the first 50 feet of shoreline and one more for each additional full 50 feet. Because Chenequa lakefront lots start at 150 feet of frontage, most qualify for four or more slips, but check what the existing pier has and whether it is grandfathered. Pine Lake also has a bulkhead line and an established shoreline set by ordinance.

Lake health is a live topic. The village tracks the invasive alga starry stonewort, posts herbicide treatments for Pine and Cornell Lakes, and records lake levels against an ordinary high-water mark of 902.72 feet on Pine Lake, per its lake data page. Friends of Beaver Lake, the North Lake Management District and Pine Lake Preservation work on the three larger lakes.

You will see it written that Pine Lake is private. It isn't. The village runs a public launch on Pine Lake, and the March 2026 brokerage comparison that lists Pine Lake as having no public access is wrong on that point. What is true is that the launch is the only public way onto the lake, and the zoning code gives shore access only to lakefront owners.

The Pine Lake launch is open 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day, with longer hours on the opening weekend of fishing season. Daily fees are $8 for a non-motorized boat, $10 under 20 feet, $12.50 for 20 to 26 feet and $15 over 26 feet. Annual permits run $80 to $150 by the same size classes and are sold at the police department on County Road K. Fees are cash or check only.

The code is strict about what the launch is for. Chapter 4 limits it to launching boats and parking, so no fishing, swimming, picnicking or boat maintenance at the site, and it bans power loading boats of 17 feet or longer, with forfeitures from $150 to $500. The village notes that the launch was built for navigation access, and that is how it is run.

Beaver Lake has its own public launch on State Highway 83, named in the village's Beaver Lake ordinance, and the DNR lists public boat landings on both Pine and Beaver Lakes. Wikipedia notes that the village has no public access to North Lake. Chenequa has no public swimming beach.

For a buyer, the practical point is simple. A Chenequa home without frontage gets you to Pine Lake as a day user at the public launch, like anyone else. If you want to use the lake every day, you need a lakefront parcel.

Chenequa follows the Lake Country model: small K-8 districts that feed one union high school. Every part of the village is in the Arrowhead Union High School District, and the DOR's 2025 tax report splits the village among four K-8 districts: Lake Country, Swallow, Stone Bank and North Lake. Which one serves a given house depends on the parcel, so check the district on the tax bill and confirm with the district office before you write an offer.

Arrowhead draws from seven K-8 districts in all. Per the Swallow district's list of Arrowhead-area schools, the others are Hartland-Lakeside, Merton Community and Richmond, along with the four that serve Chenequa. Arrowhead itself is at 700 North Avenue in Hartland.

For Illinois buyers, the closest comparison is a North Shore elementary district feeding a township high school, except that here the K-8 districts are much smaller, several of them a single school.

Every house in Chenequa runs on a private well and a private septic system. The zoning code says so directly: there is no municipal water or sewer system, and the large minimum lot sizes exist partly so each house has room for its own well and wastewater system without contaminating a neighbor's water or the lakes. The building code also keeps septic systems away from wells, lot lines and the water.

For a buyer, that means two inspections that most Lake County, Illinois buyers in sewered suburbs have never ordered. Waukesha County Environmental Health offers a well and septic evaluation for a sale, which includes a visual check of both systems and a bacteria test of the water; the county asks for the application at least two weeks before your deadline. Every septic system in the county is also in a maintenance program that requires pumping or inspection on a schedule set by system type, typically every three years. Ask the seller for the pumping records.

On an older lakefront house, the septic system's age, size and distance from the lake are the questions that turn into repair credits or a redesign, especially if you plan to add bedrooms. A larger house can need a larger system.

Services are small-village scale. The village has its own police department and contracts with Lake Country Fire and Rescue. Groceries, restaurants and errands mean a drive to Hartland, about 10 minutes away, or Oconomowoc, about 19 minutes.

Chenequa is a Milwaukee-area village, and from Lake County, Illinois it is a real drive. These are free-flow estimates from OpenStreetMap routing (OSRM), computed in October 2026 from the village hall area on County Road K. Real trips vary with traffic and season.

Vernon Hills, IL:: about 87 miles, roughly 1 hour 50 minutes.

Lake Forest, IL:: about 83 miles, roughly 1 hour 45 minutes.

Downtown Chicago (the Loop):: about 113 miles, roughly 2 hours 25 minutes.

O'Hare:: about 109 miles, roughly 2 hours 30 minutes.

Downtown Milwaukee:: about 29 miles, roughly 42 minutes.

Milwaukee Mitchell Airport:: about 34 miles, roughly 52 minutes.

The route from Lake County is north on I-94 to the Milwaukee area, then west on I-94 toward Hartland and north on State Highway 83 into the village. Milwaukee is the practical hub: the airport is under an hour, and Amtrak's Hiawatha to Chicago Union Station leaves from the Milwaukee Intermodal Station, about 28 miles and 41 minutes away, or from the Milwaukee Airport station, about 35 miles away. Madison is about 60 miles and 80 minutes west.

This is the main honest trade-off for an Illinois buyer. Geneva Lake is about 50 miles from Vernon Hills. Pine Lake is closer to 90. For a weekend house that is fine; for a house you plan to use on short notice, it is worth a test drive on a Friday afternoon.

Chenequa has no downtown, no restaurants and no shops of its own. The zoning code lists a residence district, a shoreland-wetland district and a special commercial district, and permits single-family homes, accessory uses, farming outside the shoreline buffer and municipal uses in the residence district. In practice the village is houses, woods, water and the yacht club.

Daily life happens on the lakes and in the neighboring towns. Hartland, about 3 miles and 10 minutes from the village hall by the same OSRM routing, is the closest place for groceries and errands, and the home of Arrowhead High School. Oconomowoc is about 10 miles and 19 minutes west. Delafield is south along the I-94 corridor. For sibling Lake Country guides, see Hartland, Delafield, Merton and Oconomowoc Lake.

On the water, the Pine Lake Yacht Club, formed in 1890, runs racing and a sailing school, and the lake groups listed by the village hold events through the summer. In winter, the code bans vehicles on Pine Lake's ice, so the lake has no vehicle traffic in winter, unlike busier ice-fishing lakes.

Chenequa has its own police department, at the village hall on County Road K, and contracts with Lake Country Fire and Rescue for fire and EMS. I don't characterize any town or neighborhood. If you want the data, contact the Chenequa Police Department, or look up any agency on the FBI's Crime Data Explorer.