Delavan, WI

Delavan dates to 1836. According to the Delavan Historical Society, Allen Perkins arrived in the spring of 1836 and Samuel and Henry Phoenix arrived that summer. The town took its name from E. C. Delavan of New York, who was born in 1793, never saw the place and died in 1871.

The early milestones came fast. The same history lists the first gristmill in 1839 and a first town meeting around 1842. Wikipedia says Delavan became a village on March 31, 1856, and a city on July 21, 1897.

The circus is the chapter people remember. Between 1847 and 1894, 26 circus companies wintered in Delavan, which is why the city calls itself the 19th Century Circus Capital of America. At The Lake Magazine (2019) says Edmund and Jeremiah Mabie arrived in 1847 with 27 wagons and eight elephants and bought 400 acres on Delavan Lake that grew to about 1,000 acres, on the ground that is now Lake Lawn Resort. P.T. Barnum's first circus was organized in Delavan under William C. Coup, and it left town by railcar in the spring of 1871.

I mention all of this because it explains what you see when you tour. The brick downtown, the clown and elephant sculptures in Tower Park and the resort on the lake are all leftovers of this history. Coming from Lake County, Illinois, most buyers I talk to know Delavan only as an exit on the way to Lake Geneva, and the history is usually the first surprise.

The City of Delavan covers about 7.4 square miles of land in the Census 2024 gazetteer, plus about half a square mile of water, most of it Lake Comus. It sits in the middle of Walworth County. By my straight-line measurement from the Census center points, Elkhorn is about 5.5 miles away, Darien about 4.8, Williams Bay about 5.6 and the city of Lake Geneva about 10.7. Milwaukee is about 45 miles northeast.

The 2020-2024 Census ACS puts the population at 8,689 and counts 4,235 housing units. Of the 3,952 occupied homes, 2,335, or about 59%, are owner-occupied, and 1,617 are rented. That is a much higher rental share than the lake around it, and it is one of the clearest differences between the city and Delavan Lake.

The housing mix is wider than most lake-area towns. About half the units, 2,133, are detached single-family homes. Another 453 are attached townhomes, 578 are in two- to four-unit buildings, and about 1,071 are in buildings with five or more units. Only 37 units are held for seasonal use. In other words, the city is a year-round town, and the second-home market is two miles south on the lake.

Delavan also has an industrial and commercial base. The I-43 interchanges and Highway 50 carry most of the commercial traffic, and Wikipedia counts more than 230 businesses, including manufacturers. That matters for a buyer because it supports the tax base and the restaurant and service mix you would not find in a pure resort town.

Zillow's typical value of $338,277 is about $80,000 below Lake Geneva's and about $210,000 below Williams Bay's. You get public water and sewer, an interstate interchange, a downtown with a long history and two lakes within a few minutes.

The city's own lake was refilled in 2025 and is still settling, and Delavan Lake's shoreline is mostly in the Town. The tax rate per $1,000 is higher in the city than on most of the lake, because the city levy covers more services. And the commute to Chicago is long by any measure.

Three different places use the Delavan name, and listing sites mix them freely. The City of Delavan is the incorporated city around downtown and Lake Comus. The Town of Delavan is the separate town government that surrounds the city and holds most of the Delavan Lake shoreline. Delavan Lake is a Census-designated place around the lake that, according to Wikipedia, spans parts of both the Town of Delavan and the Town of Walworth. A Delavan mailing address can be any of them.

The difference shows up on the tax bill first. The county's 2025 mill-rate sheet lists the City of Delavan and the Town of Delavan as two separate taxing districts with different municipal levies. A city parcel pays a city levy of about $7.16 per $1,000 of assessed value. A town parcel pays a town levy of about $3.05 and, on the lake, a Delavan Lake Sanitary District levy of about $1.35. I walk through the full numbers in the tax section below.

It also changes who you call. In the city, the city runs police, zoning and building permits, and the city's website points residents to WalCoMet for water and sewer accounts. In the town, the town and Walworth County handle zoning, the county's shoreland rules apply on the water, and the Delavan Lake Sanitary District runs the sewer and the lake programs. The Town of Delavan has its own police department.

Here is the practical version. If you want a lake house, a pier and a boat lift, you are almost certainly shopping the Town of Delavan, and my Delavan Lake guide is the page you want. Lake Lawn Resort is the main exception: the City of Delavan's Plan Commission reviewed its Harbor Club expansion in January 2025, so that corner of the lake falls under city review.

The city has no official neighborhood map, so I describe it by landmark, the way listings do. Treat these as starting points. Boundaries are informal, and before I would call any pocket by a subdivision name I would want it checked against the MLS subdivision field.

The first divide is age. The Census ACS says 1,030 of the city's 4,235 homes, about 24%, were built before 1940. Most of those sit in the grid around downtown and Walworth Avenue. The second divide is water. Lake Comus runs along the north side of the city, and a house that backs onto it or onto Turtle Creek is a different product from one four blocks inland. The third is the newer edges near the interstate and the lake, where most of the 1990s and 2000s construction landed.

If you are coming from Lake County, Illinois, the closest comparison I can offer is an older river town with a lake on the edge rather than a planned suburb. You will see more variety block to block than you are used to. That cuts both ways. It means value is available, and it means every house needs its own inspection and its own comps.

Delavan's housing is spread across every decade, which is unusual. According to the 2020-2024 ACS, about 24% of homes were built before 1940, 6% in the 1940s, 11% in the 1950s, 11% in the 1960s and 12% in the 1970s. Construction slowed in the 1980s (6%), then picked back up: 14% of homes date to the 1990s and 11% to the 2000s. Only about 5% were built from 2010 to 2019, and the survey found none since 2020. The median home dates to 1968.

That spread shows up on a tour. The pre-1940 stock is mostly frame and brick houses on narrow lots, many with original woodwork and many with a century of updates layered on. The postwar decades added ranches and split-levels. The 1990s and 2000s added the subdivisions and condo buildings on the edges.

The ACS puts the median value of an owner-occupied home at $218,800, with a margin of error of plus or minus $16,720, and the median gross rent at $1,094. Both are five-year averages, so they trail the current market. The Zillow figures in the next section are more current.

On a pre-1940 house, the questions I would ask in Illinois apply here too: the age of the electrical service, whether any knob-and-tube wiring remains, galvanized supply lines, the foundation and the basement's water history. None of those should end a deal. All of them belong in the price.

Zillow's home value index put the typical home value in Delavan at $338,277 in August 2026, up 5.6% from $320,253 a year earlier and 7.4% over two years. For the 53115 ZIP code, which covers the city and much of the lake around it, the August 2026 figure was $344,098, up 5.4% for the year.

For context, here is where Delavan sits among its neighbors on the same Zillow index for August 2026: Lake Geneva at $420,272, Williams Bay at $549,741 and Fontana at $680,700. Delavan is the least expensive of the four by a wide margin. Zillow's upper-tier index, which tracks the top third of homes, was $539,702 in Delavan against $887,494 in Williams Bay and $1,188,441 in Fontana.

Monthly sale numbers are much noisier. Redfin's public market tracker counted 62 sales in the city from December 2025 through May 2026, between 7 and 15 a month. With so few sales, the monthly median swung from $176,000 in April to $432,281 in January. May 2026 is the latest month in the file: 15 sales, a $320,000 median, 51 median days on market and sales at 99.4% of list price. I would not read a trend into any single month here. The Zillow index is the steadier number.

Two things move price inside the city more than anything else. One is water: a house on Lake Comus or near Delavan Lake is a different product. The other is age and condition, because the same block can hold a dated 1920s house and an updated one. If you are comparing a specific house, I would pull the nearest few sales rather than lean on the city median.

Mostly no, and I would rather say so plainly. The city's housing is year-round and moderately priced, and its top-tier Zillow value of $539,702 in August 2026 is below the middle-tier value in Williams Bay. Buyers looking for $2 million and up in the Delavan area are looking at the lake, and nearly all of that shoreline sits in the Town of Delavan.

The one real exception inside city review is Lake Lawn. The July 2024 Delavan Lake market update listed six Harbor Club homes from $692,990 to $2,250,000, and sales in the first half of 2024 from $822,192 to $1,249,234. In January 2025 the City of Delavan's Plan Commission discussed a concept for 36 more lots on the west side of the resort along the lake outlet, on what are now holes 3 and 4 of the golf course. No vote was taken at that meeting, and I have not seen an approval since.

For the true lakefront market, the numbers are on the Delavan Lake guide. The short version: a handful of lakefront homes trade each year, and the top sales have run from about $3 million to $4.4 million. Geneva Lake, a few miles south, is the market that runs higher; see my guides to Fontana-on-Geneva Lake, Williams Bay and Lake Geneva.

Coming from Lake County, Illinois, the tax bill is the first thing people compare, and Wisconsin builds it differently. There is no one-third assessment and no township multiplier. The local assessor values your home as of January 1, the state checks that assessment against market value, and the county applies a mill rate, a dollar amount per $1,000 of assessed value.

Here is the City of Delavan's 2025 rate, from the Walworth County Treasurer's mill-rate sheet, per $1,000 of assessed value: Walworth County $2.32, City of Delavan $7.16, Delavan-Darien School District $6.54, Gateway Technical College $0.56 and the Lake Comus Protection and Rehabilitation District $0.14. That adds up to $16.72. The state's school levy tax credit then takes off $1.18, for a net rate of about $15.54 per $1,000.

The rate applies to assessed value, which is not always market value. The Wisconsin Department of Revenue's 2025 comparison puts the city's overall assessment ratio at 93.36%, and its residential ratio at 94.57%. That followed a reset: the DOR had the city at 67.48% in 2023, a level that drew a notice of non-compliance, and at 99.44% in 2024 after a revaluation. If a seller's bill looks oddly low or high, check which year it is from.

Here is a worked example. Take a home at Zillow's August 2026 typical value of $338,277. At a 93.36% ratio, the assessed value is about $315,800. At $15.54 per $1,000, the tax is about $4,908 a year, roughly 1.45% of the price. If the home is your primary residence, the state's lottery and gaming credit comes off that. The DOR set its credit value at $27,000 for the 2025-26 tax year with an average credit of $190 statewide; by my arithmetic it is about $175 to $180 at Delavan-Darien's school rate. A first dollar credit may also apply. Neither credit applies to a second home.

At closing, Wisconsin charges a real estate transfer fee. Walworth County lists it at $3 per $1,000 of value, rounded to the next higher hundred, so about $1,015 on a $338,277 sale. It is normally the seller's cost. This is general information, not tax advice. Your actual bill depends on your parcel, your assessment and the credits you qualify for.

Inside the city, you are on public water and sewer. The city's website directs residents to WalCoMet, the Walworth County Metropolitan Sewerage District, for water and sewer accounts and to its EyeOnWater portal for usage. WalCoMet also appears as a line on both the city and town bills on the county's 2025 rate sheet, at a zero rate, which means it bills through user charges rather than the property tax.

That is a real difference from parts of the lake. Around Delavan Lake, the Delavan Lake Sanitary District runs the sewer, and some rural parcels in the surrounding towns are still on a private well and septic. If you are comparing a city house to a country house outside Delavan, ask for the well test and the septic inspection on the country house, and budget for both.

Parcels inside the Lake Comus Protection and Rehabilitation District also pay its small levy, about $0.14 per $1,000 of assessed value in 2025. It funds the district's lake work, covered in the next section. Electricity, gas, trash and internet providers vary by street, so I would confirm each one on the specific address before closing rather than assume.

Lake Comus is the city's own lake and the one most visitors miss. The Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission's management plan (December 2022) describes it as a shallow, 131-acre impoundment on Turtle Creek on the north side of the city, fed by a 32.8-square-mile watershed that lies entirely within Walworth County. Turtle Creek supplies about two-thirds of its water. The plan notes the lake's level has been controlled by an outlet dam for nearly two centuries.

The dam was the issue. The 2022 plan said the existing structure needed major repairs, blocked fish passage and would likely be replaced within a few years. That happened in 2024. The city's October 7, 2024 update described the new dam under construction at Terrace Street, with groundwater inside the cofferdam adding several weeks, the Terrace Street bridge expected to reopen in mid-November, rip-rap going in along the Paul Lange Arboretum shoreline over the winter while the lake was drained, and a refill planned for spring.

The drawdown came with a cleanup. The Lake Comus district had a DNR-permitted herbicide treatment applied to the exposed lakebed in the fall of 2024, and ran a roughfish bounty that, according to the city's June 17, 2025 update, removed more than 1,200 roughfish before it ended that day. The same update said the refill would begin in June 2025. The district's page lists its next board meeting on December 3, 2026 and its 2027 annual meeting on August 12, 2027.

Boating on Lake Comus is slow by rule. The city and town adopted mutual and identical boating regulations for Delavan Lake and Lake Comus, and on Lake Comus no boat may go faster than slow-no-wake except emergency craft. Think kayaks, canoes and fishing boats, not ski boats. If you are looking at a house on Lake Comus, I would ask how the water looked this past summer, since a refilled lake can take a few seasons to settle.

The city is served by the Delavan-Darien School District, a single kindergarten-through-12th-grade district that also covers the village of Darien and parts of the surrounding towns. The federal school directory for the 2023-24 school year lists an enrollment of 1,747 and the schools below. The grade split is unusual: the earliest grades are at Turtle Creek, grades 3 and 4 are at Darien Elementary in Darien, and grades 5 through 8 are at Phoenix Middle School.

For test results and the state's accountability rating, go to the Wisconsin DPI report card portal. The 2024-25 report cards were released on November 11, 2025, and rate each school and district from one to five stars. I could not open the district's 2024-25 card while writing this, so I would rather send you to the source than quote a number I have not seen.

Two other points. The 2025 tax bills in the Delavan-Darien district list voter-approved temporary tax increases for the district, one running through 2027 and one through 2041, so the school line on your bill reflects referendums. And in Wisconsin, as in Illinois, the town name on a listing does not set the school. Around the lake, some Town of Delavan parcels are in the Williams Bay, Elkhorn or Fontana districts. Inside the city, check the address with the district before you write an offer.

Delavan is a driving town. I-43 runs along the city and is the direct route to Milwaukee, about 45 miles northeast in a straight line. Highway 50 runs east through Delavan Lake and Lake Geneva toward Kenosha and I-94. There is no train in Delavan itself.

Here are my estimates for the drive, measured from Census center points and the usual routes, outside rush hour. They are estimates, not a published source, so test the drive at the hour you would make it.

To Vernon Hills and central Lake County, Illinois: about 44 miles in a straight line, roughly 75 to 90 minutes by car either east on Highway 50 to I-94 or south through Lake Geneva and Richmond. To O'Hare: about 58 miles in a straight line, roughly 80 to 95 minutes. To the Loop: about 73 miles in a straight line, roughly 1 hour 45 minutes to 2 hours. To downtown Milwaukee: roughly 50 to 60 minutes on I-43. Milwaukee Mitchell Airport is about 43 miles in a straight line, usually the easier airport from here.

For rail, the closest option is Metra's Harvard station, the end of the Union Pacific Northwest line, about 14 miles south of Delavan in a straight line. Metra's schedule data for the week of September 28, 2026 shows 14 weekday trains toward Chicago and 13 back, with morning trains at 5:30, 6:00, 6:30 and 7:00 a.m. that each take 92 minutes to Ogilvie. Fox Lake, the end of the Milwaukee District North line, is about 27 miles away. Amtrak's Hiawatha between Milwaukee and Chicago is the other rail choice if you are already headed to Milwaukee.

Downtown Delavan is the Walworth Avenue corridor, a run of 19th- and early 20th-century commercial blocks around Tower Park, where the city's fiberglass giraffe, elephant and clown sculptures mark its circus history. The city's Downtown Delavan Strategic Plan, written in 2013, described a downtown with many successful businesses alongside vacant storefronts and a few signature buildings, including the former Delavan Hotel, in poor condition. I have not seen a newer plan, so I would walk the avenue yourself and judge it as it is today.

Everyday errands are mostly along Highway 50 and near the I-43 interchanges, where the larger grocery and big-box stores are. Elkhorn is about five miles away for county offices, and Lake Geneva is about 11 miles away for a bigger restaurant and shopping district.

The city's website lists Scarecrow Fest in fall 2026 among its downtown events, and the parks department runs seasonal programs out of Phoenix Park and the city's other parks. Check the city's events page for current dates.

Inside the city, the main outdoor spaces are along the water. The Paul Lange Arboretum runs along the Lake Comus shoreline that was rebuilt in 2024. Phoenix Park has a bandshell used for summer concerts, according to Visit Lake Geneva. Tower Park downtown holds the circus sculptures. The city also lists a Mill Pond facility on its parks pages, which opened for the season on July 22 in 2026.

The big water is two miles south. Delavan Lake covers 1,906 acres with a maximum depth of 52 feet, according to the Wisconsin DNR, and the DNR lists four boat landings and one beach. The Town of Delavan's Community Park, about 15 acres of lakefront, has the public beach and a lighted launch with parking for more than 150 trailers. Fishing on the lake covers musky, walleye, northern pike, both bass species and panfish.

Golf is at Lake Lawn Resort, whose course opened in 1928 according to Wikipedia, and at other courses around the county. Geneva Lake, its shore path and the Lake Geneva beaches are about 20 to 25 minutes away.

Four items are worth knowing about. The first is the Lake Comus dam, finished in 2024 with the lake refilled starting in June 2025, covered above. For anyone buying on the north side, that project is the biggest change to the city's water in decades.

The second is Lake Lawn. BizTimes reported on February 26, 2024 that the resort had finished the first phase of a $10 million renovation of 222 rooms in its main lodge, with completion expected in early summer 2024. In January 2025 the city's Plan Commission discussed the 36-lot Harbor Club expansion concept on the resort's west side. The resort's own history is long: Wikipedia dates the original hotel to 1878 and says investors bought it out of foreclosure for $9.5 million in 2011.

The third is zoning for data centers. According to Walworth County Community News on April 27, 2026, the City of Delavan scheduled a May 4, 2026 council hearing on a zoning amendment to create a data-center category. The article said the city had received no data-center proposals. I mention it because buyers near industrial land ask, and the answer as of that article is that there was a rule in progress and no project.

The fourth is the school district's referendum debt, which shows on tax bills through 2027 and 2041. It is not a project, but it is a known line on every bill for years to come.

The Delavan Police Department provides police service throughout the City of Delavan, and it also serves the Village of Darien under an agreement. The Town of Delavan, including most of the lake, has its own police department. I don't characterize the safety of any town or neighborhood. Anyone who wants the data can contact the department through the City of Delavan or look it up in the FBI's Crime Data Explorer.