Landlord Atlas

What are the security deposit rules in South Dakota?

Verified July 11, 2026 All South Dakota topics →

South Dakota caps residential security deposits at one month's rent, and the landlord must return the deposit — or give a written statement of the specific reason for keeping any of it — within 21 days after the tenancy ends and the landlord receives the tenant's mailing address or delivery instructions.

That 21-day deadline is new: 2026 Senate Bill 4 (SL 2026, ch 179), effective July 1, 2026, replaced the old two-week deadline that most guides still quote. A second clock runs alongside it: if the tenant asks, the landlord must deliver a full itemized accounting of anything withheld within 45 days after termination. Deductions are limited to unpaid rent and other sums due under the agreement plus restoring the unit to its move-in condition, ordinary wear and tear excepted. The enforcement teeth are sharp for a small statute: any failure to comply forfeits the landlord's entire right to withhold, and bad-faith retention — or a bad-faith failure to provide the written statement or accounting — adds punitive damages of up to $200. A larger deposit than one month is legal only if landlord and tenant agree to it because special conditions pose a danger to maintenance of the premises, and any money that functions as security counts against the cap no matter what the lease calls it. South Dakota requires no deposit interest and no separate bank account.

South Dakota security deposits at a glance

Maximum deposit 1 month's rent — A larger deposit may be agreed upon between the lessor and the lessee where special conditions pose a danger to maintenance of the premises (SDCL 43-32-6.1). The cap is otherwise absolute: a lessor 'may not demand or receive' more, and any deposit of money whose function is to secure performance of a residential rental agreement is a security deposit 'however denominated.'
Return deadline 21 days
Deadline conditions Two-clock structure. Clock 1: within 21 days after BOTH the termination of the tenancy AND the landlord's receipt of the tenant's mailing address or delivery instructions, the landlord must either return the deposit or furnish a written statement showing the specific reason for withholding it or any portion of it (SDCL 43-32-24). Clock 2: within 45 days after termination of the tenancy, upon the tenant's request, the landlord must provide an itemized accounting of any deposit withheld. The 45-day accounting track supplements, and does not extend, the 21-day return-or-explain deadline. The 21-day figure took effect 2026-07-01 (SL 2026, ch 179 / 2026 SB 4, signed 2026-02-12); before that the statute said 'two weeks.' Withholding is limited to amounts reasonably necessary to (1) remedy tenant defaults in payment of rent and other funds due under an agreement and (2) restore the premises to their condition at the commencement of the tenancy, ordinary wear and tear excepted.
Itemization required Yes
Itemization rules Two tiers: if anything is withheld, the landlord must give a written statement of the SPECIFIC REASON for the withholding within the 21-day window; a full ITEMIZED ACCOUNTING of any amount withheld is owed only if the tenant requests it, and is then due within 45 days after termination (SDCL 43-32-24). Failure to comply with either duty forfeits all withholding rights, and a bad-faith failure to provide the written statement or itemized accounting is itself a punitive-damages trigger.
Separate account required No
Interest owed to tenant No
Account & interest rules No section of SDCL chapter 43-32 requires interest on residential security deposits or a separate, trust, or escrow account (verified negative — complete chapter read twice, 43-32-1 through 43-32-37).
Pet deposits No separate pet-deposit statute and no separate pet cap. Because 43-32-6.1 deems ANY deposit of money securing performance of the rental agreement a security deposit 'however denominated,' a pet deposit counts toward the one-month cap unless the parties agree to a larger total deposit under the special-conditions clause (conditions posing a danger to maintenance of the premises), and it is subject to the same 21/45-day return rules.
Non-refundable fees allowed No
Penalty for violation A lessor who fails to comply with SDCL 43-32-24 forfeits all rights to withhold any portion of the deposit. In addition, the bad-faith retention of a deposit or any portion of it, or the bad-faith failure to provide the required written statement or itemized accounting, subjects the lessor to punitive damages not to exceed $200.
Tenant forwarding-address duty The 21-day return clock does not start until the landlord has received the tenant's mailing address or delivery instructions (SDCL 43-32-24) — a tenant who never supplies an address or delivery instructions never starts the clock. The statute attaches no forfeiture to the tenant for delay in supplying it.

Notes and caveats

HEADLINE TRAP: the return deadline changed from 'two weeks' to 21 days on 2026-07-01 (2026 SB 4, SL 2026, ch 179, sec. 1; signed 2026-02-12; no effective-date clause, so the SDCL 2-14-16 default of July 1 after passage applies). As of 2026-07-11 essentially ALL secondary charts (Hemlane, iPropertyManagement, LeaseLenses '14-Day Deposits', AAOA) still say two weeks/14 days — treat any '14 day' claim as pre-July-2026. SB 4 also recast the withholding grounds as an enumerated list (substance unchanged) and made bad-faith FAILURE TO PROVIDE the statement/accounting an independent punitive-damages trigger (previously phrased as an aspect of bad-faith retention). Unchanged since 1984: the receipt-of-mailing-address trigger, the 45-day on-request accounting, the forfeiture rule, and the $200 punitive ceiling. nonrefundable_fees_allowed false on the strength of 43-32-6.1's function-over-label rule ('Any deposit of money, the function of which is to secure the performance of a residential rental agreement... shall be deemed to be a security deposit,' 'however denominated') — a 'nonrefundable deposit' is treated as a refundable security deposit subject to the cap and return rules; the statute does not address unrelated fee types such as application fees. Commercial premises have a parallel section, 43-32-24.1 (60-day return / 90-day accounting, same $200 punitive structure) — do not mix the two. Adjacent remedy: unlawful lockout or willful utility shutoff entitles the tenant to damages of two months' rent plus return of advance rent and the deposit (43-32-6). All load-bearing figures triple-read: official chapter endpoint, official per-section endpoint, and the official enrolled SB 4 text — verbatim match across all three.

Statute citations

How this record was verified: Direct read of statute text served by the official South Dakota Legislature site (sdlegislature.gov, SDLRC codified laws): the complete text of every section of SDCL chapter 43-32 (43-32-1 through 43-32-37, including all decimal sections and the repealed 43-32-7) read via the site's chapter endpoint, with every load-bearing section (43-32-6.1, 43-32-24, 43-32-13, 43-32-32, 43-32-12, 43-32-15) fetched a second, independent time via the per-section endpoint — all figures matched verbatim across reads (one month's rent cap; twenty-one days / forty-five days deposit clocks; $200 punitive ceiling; thirty-day modification notice with fifteen-day tenant termination right; twenty-four-hour written-notice entry presumption). SDCL 6-1-13 and 6-1-12 (rent-control preemption) double-read the same way. The 2026 amendment to 43-32-24 additionally pinned character-for-character from the official enrolled 2026 SB 4 (SL 2026, ch 179) and its introduced strike/underline version via the Legislature's document API; bill history from the official action log (signed by the Governor 2026-02-12; no effective-date clause, so effective 2026-07-01 under SDCL 2-14-16, read from the official site). Session sweeps run against the official bill lists: 2026 regular session (666 bills — SB 4 enacted and incorporated; HB 1231 on assistance-animal documentation tabled 2026-02-11, dead), 2025 regular session (571 bills — no landlord-tenant bills), 2025 special session (2 bills, corrections real estate only). Negative findings (no deposit interest or separate-account rule, no late-fee statute or grace period, no enumerated entry-reasons list) verified against the full chapter text in both reads. Note: sdlegislature.gov statute pages are JavaScript-rendered, but all text was read from the same official host's JSON/HTML API endpoints — no mirrors were needed or used.