Summit, WI

Summit's history starts with the survey. The village's 2045 Comprehensive Plan, adopted in August 2023, says the area was laid out after a survey by Increase Lapham in 1836, the year Wisconsin became a territory, and that the first land claims there were made in 1837. Summit was first part of Milwaukee County. The plan says that by the 1890s the Summit-Oconomowoc area drew visitors because of its many lakes.

The Pabst name runs through Summit's land. According to the plan, Frederick Pabst began acquiring land in 1906 that grew to more than 2,000 acres of farmland, helped finance the original Summit schoolhouse in 1911, built a road link from Oconomowoc to the old Highway 30, and donated the land for the Summit Cemetery. Wikipedia's village entry adds that Gustave Pabst bought land next to the Pabst estate and built the 40,000-square-foot Ventnor mansion. The Pabst Farms land is still the center of Summit's development story.

The modern village is new. The town's incorporation petition cleared the state's review board in March 2010, and voters approved village status on June 15, 2010, by 483 to 85, according to the village's incorporation page. The state certified the Village of Summit on July 29, 2010, and the first village board was elected that September. The plan notes that just before incorporating, the town signed boundary agreements with six of its eight neighbors, which is why Summit's borders have held steady while towns around it were annexed piece by piece.

That history explains the shape of the place: a mostly rural village with lakes on every side, a short stretch of I-94 development in the middle, and a land plan that has been negotiated rather than fought over.

Summit is in western Waukesha County, along I-94 about 30 miles west of downtown Milwaukee. The village's website puts its population at 5,341 as of January 1, 2024. It borders the City of Oconomowoc and the Village of Oconomowoc Lake to the north, Nashotah and Delafield to the east, and Dousman and the Town of Ottawa to the south. Addresses use Oconomowoc, Delafield or Dousman ZIP codes, so the mailing city on a listing does not tell you the municipality.

I-94 crosses the northern third of the village, with interchanges at Highway 67 (Summit Avenue) and County Road P (Sawyer Road), per the 2045 plan. Highway 67 is the main north-south road. Sunset Drive (U.S. 18), Delafield Road (County DR) and Valley Road (County B) carry most local traffic.

The housing is almost all single-family. The 2020-2024 ACS counts 2,138 housing units, of which 2,064, about 96.5%, are single-family detached. Of 1,940 occupied homes, 1,770 are owner-occupied. Another 183 units, about 9%, are seasonal or recreational, which is the lake cottages. The village says the rest of its land is a mix of farms, wetland and the I-94 corridor, and it relies on Oconomowoc, Delafield and Dousman for most shopping.

From Lake County, Illinois, the nearest comparison I can offer is a township of lakes rather than a village with a main street. Summit has no downtown. It has shorelines, a few subdivisions and an interstate exit with a hospital on it.

Summit is best searched by lake. The 2045 plan lists 19 named lakes in the village: Upper and Lower Nashotah, Upper and Lower Nemahbin, Waterville, Crooked, Upper, Middle and Lower Genesee, Silver, Sybil, Bowron, Buth, Duck, Egg, Laura, Henrietta, Golden and Utica. The Bark River runs through the middle of the village from the Nemahbin Lakes and drains about half of its land, per the plan.

The lakes divide into three groups. The east-side chain of Nashotah and Nemahbin lakes, near I-94 and Delafield Road, is on sewer and has the most lake homes. Silver Lake on the north edge, next to the City of Oconomowoc, is a clear lake with its own sewer and lake district. The south and west lakes, Golden and the Genesee chain, are more rural. The small lakes, such as Henrietta, Waterville, Widgeon or Bowron, Duck, Laura and Utica, have no specific public access, and the plan says their adjacent owners function like homeowner associations.

Two corrections to what you may read elsewhere. Dutchman Lake, which some lists put in Summit, came back as the Town of Ottawa when I checked it with the Census geocoder on October 5, 2026. And I found no Lake Rosa in the village's list.

Summit is a lakefront market in the $1 million to low-$3 million range, with acreage estates alongside it, rather than an eight-figure market like Pine Lake or Oconomowoc Lake. The public sales show the shape of it.

The highest press-reported lake sale I found was on Silver Lake. In March 2022, a 5,437-square-foot, five-bedroom home built in 2015 sold for $3.25 million, per BizTimes. It had been assessed at $1,267,200 in 2021, which is the assessment gap you will see on almost every Summit bill. On Upper Nashotah Lake, a 7,243-square-foot home built in 2006 sold for $2.95 million in the fall of 2019, per BizTimes, with a saltwater pool and a sport court.

Acreage is the other luxury product here. In February 2023, a 3,670-square-foot log home on a 36-acre site sold for $1.85 million, per BizTimes, against an assessed value of about $1.1 million.

The Census and Zillow fill in the rest. In the 2020-2024 ACS, owners valued 173 of 1,770 owner-occupied homes, about 10%, at $1 million or more, and about 40 at $2 million or more, though the margin on that last count is as large as the count. Zillow's top-tier index, the most expensive third of homes, was $1,344,394 for Summit in August 2026, up 9.0% in a year.

The Lake County, Illinois buyers I talk to who look north at Wisconsin lakes usually start with Geneva Lake. Summit is a different conversation: more lakes, smaller ones, lower prices, and a tax bill you need to read twice.

Zillow tracks Summit directly. Its typical home value for Summit was $776,275 in August 2026, up 7.9% from $719,535 a year earlier. In the same month Zillow had the City of Oconomowoc at $553,179, Nashotah at $742,329, Delafield at $766,469, Dousman at $499,609 and the Town of Ottawa at $655,064. Summit's typical value is the highest among its non-lake-village neighbors, and it rose faster than most of them over the year.

The Census figure is lower because it measures something different. The 2020-2024 ACS puts the median owner-occupied value at $533,300, with a margin of about $77,000. It is a five-year survey of owner estimates, so it lags a rising market. Zillow's index is a current model of all homes. When the two disagree by this much in a market that has risen for several years, the newer number is the better guide to today's prices, and neither replaces comparable sales.

The housing stock is mixed in age. The ACS counts 286 homes built in 1939 or earlier, about 13%, mostly older lake cottages and farmhouses; 416 from the 1990s; 318 from the 2000s; and 153 built in 2020 or later, about 7%, which is a lot of new construction for a village this size. That new building is mostly subdivision homes near the I-94 corridor and the Pabst Farms side of the village.

Rentals are a small share: 170 of 1,940 occupied homes are renter-occupied, per the ACS. The median rent estimate carries a margin of nearly $1,000, so I would not quote it.

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 for a specific house the sales on the same lake or in the same subdivision are the only numbers worth using.

Coming from Lake County, Illinois, the tax bill is the first thing people compare, and Summit's bill is easy to misread. Wisconsin bills are a mill rate times assessed value, and Summit's assessed values sat well below market in 2025. The Waukesha County Treasurer's 2025 rate sheet shows Summit's assessment ratio at 70.58%. The DOR's 2025 report rounds it to 71%.

That makes the assessed mill rate look high. In the Oconomowoc Area School District, the county sheet lists $8.19 for schools, $0.35 for the technical college, $2.08 for the county and $1.61 for the village, $12.23 gross per $1,000 of assessed value, less a $1.77 state credit, for $10.46 net. Converted to market value, that is $7.38 per $1,000. In the Kettle Moraine district the net is $11.92 assessed, or $8.41 per $1,000 of market value. On market value, those are among the lower rates in Lake Country; the City of Oconomowoc's row on the same sheet is $10.21.

Here is a worked example, by my arithmetic. A $1,500,000 lake home in the Oconomowoc district would carry about $11,070 a year in property tax; in the Kettle Moraine district, about $12,615. For comparison, Ownwell's data for Lake Forest, Illinois shows a median effective rate of 1.87%, or about $28,050 on $1,500,000.

Two charges sit outside those rates. The county sheet says its rates exclude lake districts, fire districts and special charges. Summit bills fire service separately: since 2023 a fire protection fee has appeared as its own line, and the village's 2023 example worked out to about $0.20 per square foot of buildings, with a $50 flat fee for vacant land. On a 4,000-square-foot house that is about $800 a year at the 2023 rate. Lake management district levies on Upper Nemahbin, Silver and the Genesee lakes are extra too.

Watch for a reset. In October 2026 the assessor's page referred to "Changed Assessment 2026." If assessments moved toward market, the assessed mill rate will drop and the assessed values will rise; the bill depends on the levy, not the ratio. The lottery and gaming credit, for a primary residence only, is capped at $156.30 (Oconomowoc) or $183.05 (Kettle Moraine) on the 2025 sheet. Wisconsin's transfer fee is $3 per $1,000. This is general information, not tax advice.

Summit writes its own shoreland rules. Chapter 111 of the village code, "Zoning and Shoreland Protection," on Municode, applies to land within 1,000 feet of a lake, 300 feet of a navigable river or stream, or the edge of the floodplain, whichever is greater. The village's planning page says any new building or addition in that area, decks, patios, pools and boathouses included, goes through the village planner and zoning administrator first.

Lake access is limited by lot. Section 111-94 says the village will not allow lake access to more than one lot or dwelling unit for each 150 feet of frontage, except existing substandard lots and access granted in a planned development, and it bans "pyramiding," the practice of running many off-lake homes through one lakefront lot. Public access points are exempt. New lakefront lots must have at least 20,000 square feet and 100 feet of average width if unsewered, or 10,000 square feet and 65 feet if sewered.

Structures sit back 75 feet from the ordinary high-water mark. The code lets the administrator reduce that toward the average of the two neighboring houses within 250 feet, but never below 35 feet, and allows small open-sided structures as close as 35 feet if the total in the setback area stays under 200 square feet and a vegetative buffer is planted. The first 35 feet from the water is a vegetative buffer where access and viewing corridors may total no more than 30% of the frontage or 200 feet, whichever is less. In the Estate Residential district, impervious surface within 300 feet of the water is capped at 30% of the lot.

Lot sizes away from the water are generous. The Estate Residential district (R-1) requires 2 acres and 220 feet of width; Country Residential (R-2) 1.5 acres; Village Residential (R-3) 35,000 square feet; and the lakefront Cottage Residential district (R-4), which the code says protects existing platted lake lots, 20,000 square feet. The village does not issue pier permits; piers follow DNR rules, which allow two boat slips for the first 50 feet of shoreline and one more for each additional 50 feet.

Whether a Summit house is on sewer depends on its lake. The village's utility districts page lists four main districts, mostly around the larger lakes, and says the rest of the village is on private wells and septic.

Utility District #2: Formed in 1998 as Summit Sanitary District #1, with a sewer system built in 2001. It serves mainly the Upper and Lower Nemahbin Lakes, Lower Nashotah and the northwest side of Upper Nashotah, and its wastewater is treated at the Delafield/Hartland plant.

Silver Lake Utility District: Operating since January 2006. The City of Oconomowoc owns, operates and maintains it under a sewer service agreement, serving mainly the homes around Silver Lake. The village posts a grinder pump guide for owners.

Utility District #3: The only district with both water and sewer, and the only one not around a lake. The 2045 plan places it along the I-94 corridor at County P and Highway 67.

Genesee Lakes Utility District: Created in 2009 after flooding in June and July 2008 on Lower and Middle Genesee Lakes, to pay for a permanent outlet structure; it covers the lakes and the Genesee Lake Farms subdivision.

For a buyer, three practical points follow. Confirm the district on the tax bill and ask for the utility bill, since sewer is billed separately. On a grinder-pump system, ask the age of the pump. And on any lot outside the districts, order a well and septic inspection, and do not assume you can add bedrooms without a larger septic system.

Services are village-scale. The Summit Police Department runs 24 hours a day and keeps a boat patrol on most of the village's lakes in summer, per the village. Fire and EMS come from the Western Lakes Fire District, formed March 3, 2017, in which Summit has an ownership share.

Wake boats are the open question in Summit. The village board held a public hearing on July 9, 2026, on a proposed ordinance to regulate boats that create a surfable wake. Board members did not like the draft's 500-foot distance from shore, and the village president directed the attorney to rewrite it as 200 feet from shore in water at least 20 feet deep, the Enterprise reported (July 16, 2026). As of that report it had not been adopted. Check its status before buying a wake boat or a house on a smaller Summit lake.

There is no statewide rule to fall back on. The Assembly passed AB 1033, which would have required wakesurfing boats to stay more than 300 feet from shore, but the bill history shows it failed in the Senate on March 23, 2026. Nearby, the Town of Merton has banned artificial wake equipment on Moose Lake and Lake Keesus, per a June 2026 report.

High water is the other rule to know. In August 2025, Lower Nashotah, Upper and Lower Nemahbin and Crooked Lake went to automatic slow-no-wake when the water rose above the DNR-approved line on the I-94 bridge, and Silver and Golden Lakes were slow-no-wake too, the Freeman reported (August 2025). The village president declared a state of emergency, and the village set out sand and sandbags for residents.

Lake districts do the long-term work. The 2045 plan lists four lake management districts with taxing power: Upper Nemahbin (1992, 151 parcels, $113.5 million assessed in 2022), Middle Genesee (1994, 44 parcels, $41.5 million), Lower Genesee (2004, 62 parcels, $30.5 million) and Silver Lake (2007, 132 parcels, $80.6 million). Five lake associations without taxing power cover Golden, Upper Nashotah, Lower Nashotah, Lower Nemahbin and Crooked Lakes.

Most of Summit's larger lakes have public landings, per the DNR's lake pages, checked October 5, 2026. Lower Nemahbin lists two; Upper Nemahbin, Lower Nashotah, Silver, Golden, Upper Genesee and Middle Genesee list one each. The DNR lists no public landing on Upper Nashotah, Lower Genesee, Crooked or Waterville.

The small lakes are effectively private. The 2045 plan says Henrietta, Waterville, Widgeon or Bowron, Duck, Laura and Utica Lakes have no specific public access points.

That gives Summit an unusual range for one village. The trade-off on the small lakes is resale: fewer buyers want them, so it can take longer to sell.

Off-lake homes can reach the water at the public landings, but under Section 111-94 of the code an off-lake lot does not get its own lake access unless the access was granted in a planned development. Verify any advertised deeded access on the title and survey.

Summit's lakes are quiet; its I-94 corridor is not. The 2045 plan describes the Aurora Medical Center in Summit, which opened in October 2009 on a 52-acre site at I-94 and Highway 67, with a 110-bed hospital, a 180,000-square-foot clinic and cancer center, a helipad, and more than 950 employees. Next to it, the Summit Village Commons development holds health care and commercial uses. The plan calls the village "a thriving employment center focused on medical and health care services."

The next big change is The Harvest at Pabst Farms. In October 2025, Summit and the City of Oconomowoc chose Milwaukee developer Cobalt Partners for a 210-acre mixed-use project straddling I-94 west of the County P interchange, per BizTimes (October 2025). BizTimes reported that Pabst Farms covers about 1,500 acres, that nearly 1,000 had been developed since 2002, and that a Costco store was planned at the center of the site. Concept plans submitted in January 2026 called for nearly 750 housing units, more than 550,000 square feet of retail and office space and 300,000 square feet of industrial space, per BizTimes (January 2026).

Summit has started the approvals. On June 11, 2026, the village board changed its 2045 land use map for the northwest corner of I-94 and Highway P from industrial and business park to mixed use, the Enterprise reported. The village's project page posts the master plan and traffic studies, and its ordinance list shows a further comprehensive plan amendment (Ordinance 149-2026) and a fire facilities impact fee (Ordinance 150-2026). Under that fee, new development pays 85% of the cost of any new Western Lakes fire station, per the Enterprise (June 2026).

For a lake buyer, the effect is mostly positive and mostly distant: more shopping and services ten minutes away, more traffic at the County P and Highway 67 interchanges, and little change on the lakes themselves.

Summit is split between two K-12 districts, and the split is worth knowing before you shop. The 2045 plan says the Oconomowoc Area School District covers roughly the northern two-thirds of the village and the Kettle Moraine School District covers the rest, mainly the southern sections. The DOR's 2025 tax report puts about 74% of Summit's taxable value in Oconomowoc and 26% in Kettle Moraine. Assignment is by parcel, so confirm on the tax bill and with the district.

One correction to a common claim. A Lake Country brokerage page lists Summit Elementary as a school in Summit and Oconomowoc as the only district. The village's plan says no school buildings are in the village: Summit Elementary and Silver Lake Intermediate sit on Valley Road on land a 2001 boundary agreement moved into the City of Oconomowoc, and Kettle Moraine parcels are served by Dousman Elementary, Kettle Moraine Middle and Kettle Moraine High School.

On the state's 2024-25 report cards, from the Department of Public Instruction, Kettle Moraine had an enrollment of 3,326. Oconomowoc Area had an enrollment of 4,928. The school-level data for the schools Summit addresses feed into is listed below.

Tax rates differ by district too. The DPI's 2025-26 mill rates are $5.79 per $1,000 of equalized value for Oconomowoc Area and $6.78 for Kettle Moraine, about $1,485 a year apart on a $1.5 million home by my arithmetic.

Summit sits right on I-94, which makes it one of the easier Lake Country villages to reach, but from Lake County, Illinois it is still past 90 minutes. These are free-flow estimates from OpenStreetMap routing (OSRM), computed October 5, 2026, from the village hall at 37100 Delafield Road. Real trips vary with traffic and season.

Vernon Hills, IL:: about 89 miles, roughly 1 hour 50 minutes.

Lake Forest, IL:: about 85 miles, roughly 1 hour 45 minutes.

Downtown Chicago (the Loop):: about 115 miles, roughly 2 hours 20 minutes.

O'Hare:: about 111 miles, roughly 2 hours 30 minutes.

Downtown Milwaukee:: about 31 miles, roughly 40 minutes.

Milwaukee Mitchell Airport:: about 36 miles, roughly 50 minutes.

The route from Lake County is north on I-94 through Milwaukee and west on I-94 to the Highway 67 or County P exit. There is no train in Summit. Amtrak's Hiawatha to Chicago Union Station leaves from the Milwaukee Intermodal Station, about 29 miles and 35 minutes away by the same routing. The 2045 plan notes a park and ride lot at the County P and I-94 interchange. Madison is about 49 miles and an hour west.

For an Illinois buyer, the honest comparison is that Summit is about twice as far as Geneva Lake from Vernon Hills, but it is 40 minutes from downtown Milwaukee and an hour from Madison, which matters if your work pulls you in either direction.

Summit's everyday life is lakes, parks and trails, with errands next door. The 2045 plan lists four village parks totaling about 84 acres: Genesee Lake Road Park, a 77-acre community park; Peter Prime Park (1.6 acres); Atkins-Olson Memorial Park (3.8 acres); and the undeveloped William Jones Park (1.4 acres).

Two regional trails pass through or near the village. The Lake Country Recreational Trail, owned by Waukesha County on the old Milwaukee-Watertown interurban line, runs about 11 miles between Delafield and Roosevelt Park in Oconomowoc; the plan says its Summit section, from Mill Road and Delafield Road to Sawyer Road, was paved in 2010. The state's Glacial Drumlin Trail, 51 miles from Waukesha to Cottage Grove, has a trailhead in Dousman, less than a mile south of the village line, per the plan.

On the water, the Lower Nemahbin Lake Association has run a July 4 paddle race for about 15 years, the Enterprise reported (June 2026). The first year drew 75 to 100 paddlers.

For shopping, the plan says Summit relies on the City of Oconomowoc, the City of Delafield and the Village of Dousman. Downtown Oconomowoc is about 11 minutes from the village hall by OSRM routing, and Delafield's I-94 and Highway 83 retail is a short drive east. For sibling Lake Country guides, see Oconomowoc Lake, Lac La Belle, Chenequa and Delafield.

The Summit Police Department, at the village hall on Delafield Road, provides police service across the village. I don't characterize the safety of any town or neighborhood. Anyone who wants the data can contact the department or look it up in the FBI's Crime Data Explorer.

You need to read the paperwork closely: the 71% assessment level, the separate fire fee, the lake district levies, the sewer district and the school district all change the real cost of a house, and none of them shows up in a listing's headline tax number.

From the North Shore, the closest comparison on taxes is a $1.5 million lake home in Lake Forest at roughly two and a half times the annual bill.