South Dakota Landlord-Tenant Laws
Local rent regulation in South Dakota
South Dakota law bars cities, counties, and other local governments from adopting any measure that controls the amount of rent charged for private residential property, except for housing the local government itself owns an interest in.
Cited to S.D. Codified Laws § 6-1-13 · Verified August 12, 2026 · Full South Dakota rent-increase rules →
South Dakota landlord-tenant laws by topic
South Dakota security deposits
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.
South Dakota rent increase notice
South Dakota landlords must give month-to-month tenants at least 30 days' written notice before the end of a monthly period to raise the rent, under an express lease-modification statute (SDCL 43-32-13) that covers 'the terms, rent, and conditions' of the lease.
South Dakota late fees
South Dakota has no statute capping residential late fees and no statutorily mandated grace period — late charges are purely a matter of the lease agreement, bounded only by ordinary contract-law limits on penalty clauses.
South Dakota entry notice
South Dakota requires landlords to give tenants reasonable notice before entering a rental unit, and 24 hours' written notice is presumed reasonable — but the 24-hour figure is a rebuttable presumption, not a flat statutory minimum, and the lease can set mutually agreed alternate notification methods or entry times.
South Dakota eviction process
To evict a tenant in South Dakota a landlord files a verified complaint and summons for forcible entry and detainer -- and since July 1, 2024 serves NO advance notice to quit, because SDCL 21-16-2, which had required three days' written notice, was repealed outright by 2024 S.D. Sess. Laws ch. 75, sec. 1.
South Dakota application & screening fees
South Dakota sets no limit on residential rental application or tenant screening fees, and no state law requires a receipt, a refund, a disclosure before payment, or a written denial notice at the application stage.
South Dakota deposit interest
South Dakota requires no interest on a residential security deposit, and a 2026 amendment to the very section that gives the money back left it that way.
South Dakota habitability & repairs
South Dakota requires a landlord of residential premises to keep the premises and all common areas in reasonable repair, fit for human habitation and in good and safe working order for the whole term, and to maintain all electrical, plumbing or heating systems in good and safe working order — a duty the parties may not waive or modify.
South Dakota lease termination
South Dakota has two landlord notice routes and no court decision reconciling them, so a reader has to know which one is in play.
South Dakota mobile home park laws
South Dakota has no manufactured-home community tenancy act: lot tenancies run under the general leasing chapter, SDCL chapter 43-32, and evictions under the forcible entry and detainer chapter, SDCL chapter 21-16.
South Dakota Fair Market Rents (FY 2027) — HUD's benchmark rents for every South Dakota metro area and county.
Changes since last full verification
The Verified date above (July 11, 2026) marks the last time every figure on this page was verified end-to-end against official state sources. The changes below were published since then, each verified against the official source it names (what these dates mean).
- Correction, September 5, 2026 — Corrections from official reads: Tennessee's Jones v. VCPHCS I premises were office space, not a clinic; South Dakota's 2024 SB 90 was signed March 26, 2024 (three places said March 14) and § 16-2-58.2 was amended, not added, by 2026 ch. 93; Massachusetts' fee-in-lieu-of-deposit proviso came from St. 2024, c. 150, § 50, not St. 2025, c. 9 (which extended the move-in limit to the landlord's agent); Georgia's Alexander v. Steining holds that a rent-increase notice is itself the 60-day termination notice, so the higher rent cannot begin until the period has run; Missouri's § 441.043(2) preemption list is now stated in full.
- Correction, August 5, 2026 — South Dakota's late-fee page no longer describes a '3-day notice to quit' as current law — that notice statute (SDCL 21-16-2) was repealed effective July 1, 2024. The surviving three days (SDCL 21-16-1(4)) are a waiting period before a nonpayment eviction can be filed, not a rent grace period and not a notice the tenant receives.
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 section these answers rest on (43-32-6.1, 43-32-24, 43-32-13, 43-32-32, 43-32-12, 43-32-15) read 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 served through an interactive viewer, but all text was read from the same official host's published data endpoints — no mirrors were needed or used. September 5, 2026 addendum: the decisive figures touched by the 2025-2026 enactments reviewed that day were re-read on the official host — § 43-32-24 with SL 2026 ch 179, § 16-2-58.2 with 2026 HB 1014, and the 2024 SB 90 action log on sdlegislature.gov; the earlier reads stand as recorded.