The Real Cost of Living in Port Washington, Wisconsin

The Headline Price -- and Why Sources Disagree

Four different sources put Port Washington's current home-price level in four different places. Zillow's Home Value Index -- a smoothed valuation estimate, not a count of actual closed sales -- puts the typical home value at $330,982, up 5.6% over the past year. Redfin, which tracks actual closed transactions, reports a median sale price of $352,000 for the most recent month, up a much steeper 13.5% year-over-year. Homes.com reports a median home price of $404,499. Movoto reports homes selling for a median of $475,900 in July 2026. That's roughly a $145,000 spread -- close to 45% of the low end -- across sources that are nominally describing the same market in the same general period.

Some of that spread is explainable by methodology: a smoothed valuation index (Zillow) and an actual closed-sale median (Redfin, Movoto, Homes.com) are different kinds of numbers that don't always move together, and aggregator sites can differ in which listings and time windows they include. But a spread this wide is also a signal that Port Washington, like many smaller cities, doesn't generate enough monthly closed-sale volume to produce a single stable, low-noise median the way a large metro would. The practical takeaway: treat any single quoted "Port Washington price" as a rough midpoint of a real range, not a precise figure, and get an actual comparative market analysis from a local agent pulling current closed comps for the specific style, lot, and location you want.

Property Tax: What Sources Show, and What They Don't Agree On

Effective property-tax-rate figures for Port Washington and Ozaukee County also vary by source. One property-tax aggregator puts Port Washington's own median effective rate at 1.24%, based on actual property records. County-level figures range further: one source cites an average effective rate of 1.58% for Ozaukee County, while another puts the county median effective rate at 1.16% -- described as above the roughly 1.02% national median but below Wisconsin's own statewide median of roughly 1.43%. That's a real, disclosed range rather than one clean number, and it likely reflects different methodologies (assessed-value-based versus market-value-based effective rates) and different snapshots in time rather than one source simply being wrong.

Applying that range directly to the home-price figures above gives a sense of the real spread in dollar terms rather than a single misleadingly precise number. At the low end of the sourced range (1.16%): a $330,982 home (the Zillow ZHVI figure) carries roughly $3,840/year in property tax; a $404,499 home (Homes.com's median), roughly $4,690/year; a $475,900 home (Movoto's July 2026 median), roughly $5,520/year. At the high end of the sourced range (1.58%): those same three home values carry roughly $5,230/year, $6,390/year, and $7,520/year respectively. These are simple rate-times-value calculations, not actual tax bills -- a specific parcel's assessed value, set through the city assessor's periodic revaluation, can run above or below its current market price, and only the Ozaukee County or City of Port Washington assessor's office can confirm a specific property's current assessment.

Wisconsin also governs how much a municipality's property-tax levy can grow year over year through a statewide levy-limit law, which is worth understanding on top of the raw rate. Under that system, a municipality's allowed increase in its operating levy is generally capped at the percentage increase in the community's equalized value attributable specifically to net new construction -- if a town saw no new construction in a given year, its allowed levy increase for that year is zero percent. Equalized values themselves are published for every county and municipality each August 15, and state law separately requires that assessed values for each major property class be brought within 10% of full market value at least once every four years, a process meant to keep comparisons fair across municipalities that assess at different ratios of market value. The practical effect for an owner: a Port Washington tax bill isn't simply "the rate times your home's value" the way it might be pitched informally -- it's the product of a state-constrained municipal levy, the city's own assessment ratio, and how equalized value is currently calculated, which is exactly why getting an actual current tax card from the assessor matters more here than in a state with a simpler flat-rate system.

State Income Tax and Sales Tax -- A Real Structural Difference

This is a genuinely different cost structure than the no-income-tax coastal states covered elsewhere on this site. Wisconsin taxes wage and investment income through a four-bracket system running from 3.5% up to 7.65% for the 2025 tax year; under 2025 Wisconsin Act 15, the income threshold at which the second bracket (4.4%) ends increased for all filers -- for example, to $50,480 for single filers and heads of household (up from $29,370 in 2024) and to $67,300 for married couples filing jointly (up from $39,150 in 2024). The top 7.65% rate applies to taxable income above roughly $323,290 for single filers and $431,060 for married couples filing jointly. Wisconsin also levies a state sales tax on top of that, at a base statewide rate of 5%; this research did not confirm this session whether Ozaukee County has adopted an additional county sales-tax add-on on top of that base rate, so that specific combined figure should be confirmed directly with the Wisconsin Department of Revenue or a local tax professional rather than assumed.

For a buyer relocating from a state with no income tax and no (or a lower) sales tax, that's a real, quantifiable addition to total cost of living that has nothing to do with the property-tax figures above -- and it cuts the opposite direction from several other coastal markets on this site, where the pitch is often "no income tax offsets a higher property-tax rate." In Port Washington, a household is generally carrying property tax, state income tax, and state sales tax all at once, which is worth modeling explicitly against a household's specific income and spending pattern rather than assumed away.

Insurance: A Different Risk Profile Than an Ocean Market

Wisconsin's average homeowners insurance premium is reported in a range depending on coverage level and source -- from roughly $1,172/year (for $250K dwelling / $125K personal property / $200K liability coverage) up to roughly $1,367-$1,394/year (for $300K dwelling coverage) and as high as $1,897/year under a different methodology. All of those figures sit comfortably below the reported averages for neighboring Michigan ($2,545), Minnesota ($3,150), Illinois ($2,987), and Iowa ($3,492). That said, the trend line is real and upward: Wisconsin homeowners saw premiums rise 12.3% in 2023 and 15.5% in 2024, a meaningfully faster pace of increase than the state's underlying affordability advantage might suggest, and worth pricing into a multi-year hold rather than assuming the current relatively low base rate is fixed.

The risk shape itself is also genuinely different from an ocean market. Great Lakes homes in Port Washington generally aren't sitting inside a FEMA-mapped Special Flood Hazard Area the way barrier-island or tidal-marsh properties are, so the mandatory-separate-NFIP-policy dynamic that shapes ownership costs in this site's Atlantic and Gulf coast markets is much less commonly a factor here. The real, comparable risk instead is bluff and shoreline erosion for bluff-top or immediate-lakefront parcels, which is typically addressed through shoreline-armoring permitting run by Ozaukee County and the Wisconsin DNR rather than through a FEMA flood policy -- a structurally different (and differently insured and permitted) risk than storm-surge flooding. None of that is a guarantee that any specific address sits outside a mapped flood zone; get an address-specific determination and an actual quote from a licensed Wisconsin agent before budgeting a number for any particular parcel.

Utilities and Everyday Cost of Living

This is a genuine, disclosed gap rather than a filled-in guess: this session's research budget was exhausted before current, sourced figures for Port Washington-specific electricity rates, water/sewer costs, or other utility line items could be gathered and confirmed. Southeastern Wisconsin communities like Port Washington are generally served by municipal water/sewer utilities and by regional electric providers common to the area, but this page does not state a specific provider name or rate for Port Washington itself because that wasn't independently sourced this session. Get current utility-cost information directly from the City of Port Washington's utility department or a local agent before budgeting a number.

HOA and Association Costs

Port Washington's historic downtown and older in-town neighborhoods are generally non-HOA single-family housing stock typical of a 19th-century harbor city, and this research did not identify a dominant HOA-governed subdivision pattern citywide. That said, newer lakefront or planned-subdivision development on the city's edges may carry homeowners-association dues and covenants that this research did not specifically confirm this session. Any specific listing describing an association, covenant, or shared-maintenance agreement should have its actual current dues and governing documents confirmed directly rather than assumed absent.

Putting the Real Number Together

For a representative $350,000-$400,000 Port Washington purchase, a realistic annual recurring-cost floor looks roughly like: $4,060-$6,320 in property tax depending on where the actual assessed value and applicable rate land within the sourced 1.16%-1.58% range; a homeowners policy likely in the low-to-mid four figures, given Wisconsin's below-regional-average but currently rising premium trend; ongoing exposure to Wisconsin's state income tax (3.5%-7.65% across four brackets) on the household's income, separate from the property itself; and state sales tax on ordinary purchases at a 5% base statewide rate. None of these figures substitutes for an actual current tax card from the Ozaukee County or City of Port Washington assessor, actual insurance quotes, and an actual comparative market analysis for a specific property -- but together they give a more honest starting budget than a bare purchase-price headline alone, and they make explicit that this market's total tax burden includes real state income and sales tax that several other markets on this site simply don't carry.