Nashotah, WI

Nashotah takes its name from the two lakes just west of it. The Wikipedia entry on the Nashotah Lakes says the name means "twins," which fits a pair of lakes joined end to end.

The village grew up around transportation. Its own history page says Nashotah was an unincorporated part of the Town of Delafield and a popular stop for train travelers. The station on Rasmus Road was first called the Pine Lake Station and was renamed the Nashotah Station in 1875. The old depot building is still there. In January 2026 the Oconomowoc Enterprise reported that a home decor boutique was restoring the depot and moving in.

Before the railroad there was the road. The Wikipedia village entry dates the Red Circle Inn to 1848 on the Watertown Plank Road, as a resting place for stagecoaches, and says the Pabst brewery owners bought it in 1889, when summer estates on the area lakes made it a social stop. The inn's own site still calls it Wisconsin's oldest restaurant, in business since 1848, and the village history page says the same.

The village itself is much newer. Nashotah incorporated on September 11, 1957, per the village. Most of what you see today came later still. The 2020-2024 Census survey dates about 46% of the village's homes to the 1990s, which is the decade that built most of its subdivisions (more on that in the market section).

Nashotah sits in the middle of Waukesha County's Lake Country, between Hartland to the east, Delafield to the south and Oconomowoc to the west. The Census gazetteer puts the village at about 1.63 square miles of land and 0.03 square miles of water. That water figure matters, and I come back to it in the lakes section: there is almost no lake inside the village line.

The roads that define it are State Highway 16, County Road C (Lakeland Drive, per the village), the old Watertown Plank Road, where the village hall sits at N44W32950, and Rasmus Road, where the fire station, Dickten Park and the post office are. Interstate 94 runs just south, through Delafield.

It is a small place. The Wisconsin DOR's 2025 Town, Village and City Taxes report estimates the January 2025 population at 1,303, and the 2020-2024 Census ACS counts 523 housing units. Of those, 435 are single-family detached homes, about 83%. Another 24 are attached single-family homes and 38 are in buildings of five to nine units. Of the 511 occupied homes, 472 are owner-occupied, about 92%. The survey's margins of error are wide in a village this size, so treat these as approximate.

Village government is lean. The village's general information sheet, dated July 11, 2026, lists a part-time police department with 24-hour coverage from the Waukesha County Sheriff, fire and paramedic service from Lake Country Fire and Rescue, garbage billed on the tax bill, and the Delafield library as the closest in the county system.

You are a few minutes from three lake towns and from Lapham Peak.

The village has almost none, the Nashotah and Nemahbin Lakes are in Summit, and your boat access as a village resident is a permit for someone else's launch. It is also not a walkable downtown; the Red Circle Inn and a few businesses are the commercial core. And from Illinois, it is closer to two hours than one.

This is the single most useful fact on this page, and none of the ranking pages say it. Upper and Lower Nashotah Lakes are not in the Village of Nashotah. I checked the coordinates of both lakes against the Census Bureau's geocoder, and both fall in the Village of Summit, in the Oconomowoc Area School District and the Oconomowoc 53066 ZIP code. The same is true of Upper and Lower Nemahbin Lakes just to the south. BizTimes confirmed it in its 2019 report on an Upper Nashotah sale, which described the house as located in the Village of Summit.

A Lake Country brokerage's Nashotah page says the village is almost entirely surrounded by lakes. That is a fair description of the region. Inside the village line itself, the Census counts about 0.03 square miles of water, roughly 18 acres. Mapping data puts part of Forest Lake, a 22-acre lake per the DNR, on the village's northern edge, and the Census geocoder places the lake's center in the neighboring Town of Merton, so it straddles the line.

Here are the lakes buyers usually mean when they say "Nashotah," with the DNR's figures. Upper Nashotah Lake is 131 acres with a maximum depth of 53 feet. Lower Nashotah Lake is 93 acres and 43 feet deep, with moderately clear water and a public boat landing, and fish including walleye and trout. The DNR lists Upper Nemahbin at 277 acres and Lower Nemahbin at 239. Nagawicka Lake, the large lake to the southeast, is in the City of Delafield.

Lower Nashotah is a small lake with an active debate. The Waukesha Freeman reported in February 2026 that the Lower Nashotah Lake Association asked the Village of Summit for an ordinance restricting artificial wake enhancement. The association counts 54 residences on the lake. The article notes a no-wake period from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, that a similar request was voted down in 2024, and that Summit's village president said he wanted to set parameters by lake rather than ban the boats. If you are shopping Lower Nashotah with a wake boat in mind, check the current Summit ordinance before you write an offer.

For a Nashotah village resident, boat access runs through a neighbor. The village information sheet says residents can get a permit for the Bleeker Street boat launch on Nagawicka Lake from the City of Delafield, with proof of residence plus the vehicle VIN and plate number. Delafield sets the price.

The Lake County, Illinois buyers I talk to who look north at Wisconsin lake property usually start with Lake Geneva and then ask about Lake Country. When Nashotah comes up, the first thing I tell them is the point above: the village is a strong address for an off-lake home, and the lakefront that carries the Nashotah name is in Summit.

Public sale data for these smaller lakes is thin. The clearest press report I found is from 2019, when BizTimes reported that a 7,243-square-foot home built in 2006 on the shore of Upper Nashotah Lake sold for $2.95 million, with four bedrooms, five baths, a pool and a lighted sport court. That is seven years old, so treat it as a marker of what a large newer house on a small, deep lake can bring, and nothing more precise.

The index data gives the current picture for the village. Zillow's August 2026 data puts the typical Nashotah home at $742,329, up 3.4% from a year earlier, and its top-tier index, the typical value of the most expensive third of homes, at $1,572,506, up 4.8%. For the Nashotah 53058 ZIP code, which reaches beyond the village, the figures are $747,994 and $1,595,139. The Census ACS counts 9 owner-occupied homes in the village valued between $1 million and $1.5 million and none above that, with a wide margin of error.

So the price picture runs in three tiers. Inside the village, most homes are valued in the $500,000 to $1 million range, with the best newer houses on large lots reaching past $1 million. Homes on the Nashotah and Nemahbin Lakes sit in Summit, and for those I have no current sourced sale. The ZIP's top-tier index of about $1.6 million is the nearest public marker, and the 2019 Upper Nashotah sale is the only frontage price I can cite. For contrast, a Pine Lake home a few miles north in Chenequa sold for $15 million plus $1 million in contents in 2022, per Milwaukee Magazine. The lakes near Nashotah are smaller and shallower than 711-acre, 85-foot-deep Pine Lake, and they do not trade at that level.

What separates one Nashotah-area lake house from another is mostly the lake itself. A 131-acre lake like Upper Nashotah and a 277-acre lake like Upper Nemahbin offer very different boating, and Lower Nashotah's weekend no-wake hours change how a ski boat gets used. Before price, I would ask three questions of any listing: which lake and how many feet of frontage, which municipality and school district, and what the lake association or lake district is working on. The last one tells you whether a wake-boat rule, a weed treatment program or a dredging assessment is coming.

If you want lakefront and the Nashotah mailing address, ask which municipality, which school district and which lake association a listing falls in.

Nashotah is small enough to drive end to end in a few minutes, but it is not uniform. The useful way to split it is by subdivision and by utility, because a handful of streets are still on private septic.

The village information sheet names the streets that are not on municipal sewer: Buckhorn Drive, Circle Drive, Elderwood Drive, Mertins Drive, Nashotah Road, Oakwood Avenue and Woodsview Drive. Everything else in the village is sewered. That list is worth keeping in your phone when you tour, because it changes the inspection you order and the questions you ask about an addition.

The same sheet mentions two named communities: Harbors Parc Condominiums, which contracts its own garbage service, and Lake Country Estates, where the village posts meeting notices. A brokerage listing also names Nashotah Farms as a subdivision, describing a three-quarter-acre lot there. I have not been able to map the exact boundaries of each from public sources, so confirm the subdivision on the listing and the plat.

The 1990s building boom shows in the housing stock. The ACS counts 238 homes, about 46%, built from 1990 through 1999, and 82 more built in the 2000s, for a median year built of 1993. Only 16 homes are listed as built in the 1940s and 57 in 1939 or earlier, and those older houses cluster near the historic core around the Watertown Plank Road and Rasmus Road.

Nashotah has a Zillow index, which many villages this size do not. In Zillow's August 2026 data the typical home value was $742,329, up 3.4% from $718,033 in August 2025. That is a slower year than its neighbors. Over the same twelve months Zillow had the Village of Summit at $776,274, up 7.9%, Delafield at $766,469, up 6.3%, Hartland at $672,143 and Genesee at $625,897. Nashotah sits near the top of that group on value and near the bottom on this year's growth.

The 2020-2024 Census ACS puts the median value of owner-occupied homes lower, at $483,300. The two numbers measure different things. The ACS asks owners to estimate value and averages five years of answers back to 2020, while Zillow models today's value of every home. In a market that has risen since 2020, the ACS will trail.

The ACS distribution is still useful. It counts 154 owner-occupied homes valued at $500,000 to $749,999, 56 at $750,000 to $999,999, and 9 at $1 million to $1.5 million. The village is a mid-to-upper market of newer single-family homes, with few small starter houses and no estate tier inside its line. The median gross rent in the survey was $1,375, though with only 39 renter households the margin is wide.

The state's figures point the same way. The DOR's 2025 report puts Nashotah's total full value, its estimate of the market value of all taxable property, at $322,900,200. Divided by the 523 housing units in the ACS, that is about $617,000 per home by my arithmetic, a rough figure because it includes land and the village's few businesses.

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 in a village of about 500 homes a monthly median swings on a single sale. For a specific house, recent sales in the same subdivision are the numbers that matter.

Coming from Lake County, Illinois, the tax bill is the first thing people compare. 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 $3,158,915 in total property tax across Nashotah. That is a gross rate of about $9.78 per $1,000 of full value, and about $8.85 after the state school levy credit.

Two details make Nashotah simpler than most of its neighbors. First, the whole village is in one K-8 district, Lake Country, and one high school district, Arrowhead, so there is no district line splitting the rate the way there is in Chenequa. Second, the DOR lists the village's assessments at 96% of full value, so the assessed value on your bill runs a little below the state's market estimate. Rates printed on a county bill apply to that assessed value, so they read slightly higher than the full-value rates above. The DPI's 2025-26 mill rates are 3.19 for Lake Country and 1.84 for Arrowhead.

Here is a worked example. A $750,000 Nashotah home at the 2025 effective rate of $8.85 per $1,000 would carry about $6,640 a year. A $1,500,000 home would carry about $13,275. For comparison, Ownwell's data for Lake Forest, Illinois shows a median effective rate of 1.87%, which on the same $750,000 would be about $14,025.

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 second 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 $136 in Nashotah by my arithmetic. The first dollar credit applies to every improved parcel. Garbage service is billed on the tax bill too, per the village, and sewer is billed quarterly in advance.

When you sell, Wisconsin charges a real estate transfer fee of $0.30 per $100 of value, or $3 per $1,000. On a $750,000 sale that is $2,250.

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

Nashotah follows the Lake Country model of a K-8 district feeding a union high school, and unlike many of its neighbors it has a single answer. The DOR's 2025 report places all of the village's taxable value in the Lake Country School District for kindergarten through eighth grade and the Arrowhead Union High School District for grades 9 through 12. The village information sheet lists the same two districts.

Lake Country is a single school serving pre-K through eighth grade.

Arrowhead draws from seven K-8 districts in all, so the high school is much larger than the village. Nashotah is a small part of it: the DOR's figures put the village at about 3% of Arrowhead's taxable value and about 18% of Lake Country's.

For Illinois buyers, the closest comparison is a North Shore elementary district feeding a township high school, except that Lake Country's K-8 district is a single campus. As always, confirm the district for a specific address with the district office before you write an offer.

Two old buildings give Nashotah more history than its 1957 incorporation date suggests.

The Red Circle Inn sits on the old Watertown Plank Road inside the village. The village and the inn both call it the oldest restaurant in Wisconsin, operating since 1848, and its current site describes a supper club menu and event rooms for 10 to 240 guests. It is the best-known address in the village and the anchor of the small commercial stretch along the Plank Road.

The other is the railroad depot on Rasmus Road. The station there was renamed the Nashotah Station in 1875, per the village history page, and the depot building still stands. The Oconomowoc Enterprise reported in January 2026 that a home decor boutique was restoring it and moving in. For a buyer, the practical point is that the oldest homes in the village sit near these two buildings, so the historic core is where to look for pre-1950 houses.

Start with utilities. The village information sheet says all of Nashotah is served by municipal sewer except the seven streets named in the neighborhoods section. Sewer is billed quarterly in advance, and connection fees are paid when you apply for a building permit. The same sheet lists no village water utility, so expect a private well on most properties and confirm it on the listing. A well water test is cheap and worth ordering on every purchase. On the septic streets, add a septic evaluation. Waukesha County Environmental Health offers a well and septic evaluation for a sale, with a visual check of both systems and a bacteria test of the water, and asks for the application at least two weeks before your deadline. Every septic system in the county is also on a maintenance schedule, typically pumping or inspection every three years, so ask the seller for the records. Most Lake County, Illinois buyers coming from sewered suburbs have never ordered either inspection, and it is the step I see skipped most often when people buy across the line.

Building permits run through the village. Its general information sheet says permits are not required for doors, driveways, fences, reroofing, residing or windows, as long as no openings change in size and no new culvert is needed. Everything else goes through the building inspector. The village also posts a setback and yard requirements ordinance (section 17.55) on its ordinances page, and a new fee and forfeiture schedule took effect October 1, 2026, per the village home page.

If you are buying on one of the nearby lakes in Summit, the shoreland rules come from that municipality and the state. Wisconsin's minimum standards in NR 115 require a 75-foot setback from the ordinary high-water mark for buildings, which can be reduced to the average of the neighboring houses but never below 35 feet, and a vegetative buffer of at least 35 feet inland. Villages and cities write their own shoreland rules within state law, so ask the Village of Summit for its current code.

Piers follow state law everywhere. 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.

Nashotah is a Milwaukee-area village. From Lake County, Illinois it is a real drive, but an easy one: I-94 north into Wisconsin, west on I-94 past Milwaukee, and north into the village off County Road C. These are free-flow estimates from OpenStreetMap routing (OSRM), computed in October 2026 from the center of the village. Real trips run longer with traffic.

From Vernon Hills it is about 88 miles, roughly 1 hour 50 minutes. From Lake Forest it is about 84 miles, roughly 1 hour 45 minutes. Downtown Chicago is about 114 miles and roughly 2 hours 20 minutes, and O'Hare about 111 miles and roughly 2 hours 35 minutes. Downtown Milwaukee is about 31 miles, roughly 41 minutes, and Milwaukee Mitchell Airport is about 35 miles, roughly 51 minutes.

Milwaukee is the practical hub. Amtrak's Hiawatha to Chicago Union Station leaves from the Milwaukee Intermodal Station, about 29 miles and 39 minutes from the village by the same routing. Madison is about 54 miles and 70 minutes west, and Lake Geneva about 40 miles and 66 minutes south.

Day to day, everything is close. Delafield is about 3 miles and 7 minutes, Hartland about 5 miles and 9 minutes, and Oconomowoc about 6 miles and 12 minutes.

This is the honest trade-off for an Illinois buyer. Geneva Lake is about 50 miles from Vernon Hills, and Nashotah is closer to 90. For a weekend house that works. For a house you plan to reach on short notice, test the drive on a Friday afternoon.

Nashotah is mostly houses, with a small cluster of businesses along the Watertown Plank Road and Highway 16. Groceries and most errands mean a short drive to Delafield, Hartland or Oconomowoc.

The village park is Dickten Park, next to the fire station on Rasmus Road. The village's park page lists a baseball field, a soccer field, a basketball court, volleyball, a horseshoe pit, a paved walking path, restrooms and a covered shelter with 10 tables that can be reserved. The information sheet adds a playground, a pickleball court and adult exercise equipment.

The bigger green space is Nashotah Park, a Waukesha County park north of Highway 16 off County Road C, which the village sheet describes as offering hiking, cross-country skiing, fishing, picnic areas and a fenced dog park. A few miles south, the Lapham Peak Unit of the Kettle Moraine State Forest has lighted cross-country ski trails and a 45-foot observation tower on the highest point in Waukesha County, 1,233 feet above sea level, per the DNR.

The lakes are the other half of daily life. The Nagawicka launch permit gets you onto one of the larger lakes in the area, and Lower Nashotah has a public landing per the DNR.

For neighboring guides, see Delafield, the Town of Delafield, Summit, Chenequa and Genesee.

The village information sheet lists a part-time Nashotah Police Department, with the Waukesha County Sheriff's Office providing 24-hour coverage, and fire and paramedic service from Lake Country Fire and Rescue. I don't characterize the safety of any town or neighborhood. Anyone who wants the data can contact the Nashotah Police Department through the village hall or look up the agency on the FBI's Crime Data Explorer.