Best Places to Buy Rental Property in South Dakota (2026)
Two covered South Dakota markets compared on asking rental yield, 4.4 percent to 5.2 percent, using tracked home sales and rental listings; coverage explained below.
Resideline currently has enough sales and rental data to compare Rapid City and Sioux Falls. This is a comparison of two covered markets, not a comprehensive ranking of South Dakota. Gross asking rental yields run from 4.4 percent in Sioux Falls to 5.2 percent in Rapid City. The rental mix matters. In Sioux Falls the house median asking rent is $1,849 against $1,205 for all listings. That gap belongs in a house-to-house comparison, house rent against house sale prices, not on top of the mixed-sale ratio in the table.
The ranking
| # | City | Gross yield | Median asking rent | Rentals (12 mo) | Median closed price | Closings | Sales window | Confirmed-close median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rapid City | 5.2% | $1,575 | 871 | $366,884 | 368 | 6 months | n/a |
| 2 | Sioux Falls | 4.4% | $1,205 | 2,633 | $330,000 | 1,915 | 6 months | n/a |
City by city
1. Rapid City, 5.2 percent gross
Homes in Rapid City went under contract in a median of 8 days, so a buyer chasing its 5.2 percent yield needs financing ready before the search. At $366,884 to buy and $1,575 a month to rent, Rapid City yields 5.2 percent gross on 368 tracked closings. The Rapid City market page carries the monthly figures.
2. Sioux Falls, 4.4 percent gross
Homes in Sioux Falls closed at a median of $330,000 over the last six months and the median asking rent in the last twelve months was $1,205, a gross yield of 4.4 percent. Houses there closed at about $187 per square foot. The Sioux Falls market page carries the monthly figures.
How this ranking is built
- •Cities: every South Dakota city where Resideline tracked at least 100 closings inside the municipal boundary in its reporting window (six or twelve months) and at least 50 rental listings under the city's name since September 10, 2025: 2 cities qualify.
- •Prices: the median price homes closed at inside the city limits, from Resideline's tracked closings; the state comparison uses the statewide median of $342,500 across 4,512 closings.
- •Rents: the median advertised rent on rental listings Resideline tracked in the last twelve months, all property types, measured on the listings that carry the city's name (a postal footprint, wider than the city line in some places).
- •Confirmed-close medians: Observed rent blends two kinds of record: confirmed lease closes extracted from property records, and the final asking rent on listings that left Resideline tracking without a recorded close. Where a city has at least 30 confirmed closes in the window, their median is printed beside the asking figure; in the last twelve months about a quarter of Resideline's close episodes are confirmed closes. The asking and confirmed-close samples are separate, not paired, so a difference between their medians is not a measured gap on the same listings.
- •What is missing: taxes, insurance, vacancy, management and repairs, which turn a gross yield into a net one, and the unit mix, which differs between what sells and what rents.
Sources and related pages
- •Resideline tracked closings inside city limits (window per city, updated September 10, 2026) and rental listings since September 10, 2025; confirmed lease closes extracted from property records.
- •More South Dakota rankings: Cap Rate by City ranks the South Dakota cities Resideline tracks by gross rental yield. The South Dakota housing market hub carries the statewide figures and the largest South Dakota markets by closings.
- •Asking rent vs observed rent compares live asking rents with final asking rents under that study's own definition; it says nothing about confirmed lease closes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which South Dakota city has the highest asking rental yield?
Rapid City, at 5.2 percent: a median asking rent of $1,575 against a median closed price of $366,884, on 368 closings and 871 rental listings. Rents and sales are separate samples, so the ratio is a screen rather than a guaranteed return on a given home.
Does the cheapest South Dakota city also have the highest asking rental yield?
No. Sioux Falls is the cheapest at $330,000 but ranks second on the ratio; Rapid City leads because its asking rent is high relative to its price. The ratio is a screen, not a matched property yield.
Are these asking rents or confirmed lease closes?
The yield column uses the median asking rent on tracked listings. Where a city has at least 30 confirmed lease closes in the window, the table also shows their median, so you can see how far asking sits from closes there. Resideline's close records blend confirmed closes with final asking rents on listings that left tracking, and about a quarter of the last twelve months are confirmed closes.
How many South Dakota cities qualify?
Two, each with at least 100 tracked closings inside the city limits and 50 rental listings in the last twelve months.
About the author
Jeffrey Batista
Jeffrey Batista is the founder of Resideline, a real estate technology company building institutional grade valuation and investment analysis tools for real estate investors.
A software engineer with more than 10 years of experience, Jeffrey has worked across full stack development, infrastructure, data engineering, machine learning, and large scale systems. He left his engineering career to build Resideline full time.
Jeffrey is also a real estate investor with nearly a decade of hands on experience buying, renovating, managing, and analyzing residential properties. His experience on both sides of the industry, as an engineer and an investor, led him to build Resideline after seeing how fragmented and outdated many of the tools available to individual investors were.
Today, he leads the development of Resideline's proprietary data infrastructure, automated valuation models, rental analytics, and investment underwriting technology.
Could your next South Dakota rental work?
Create a free account to review rental comps, model operating costs and explore projected cash flow.
Create a free account3 free reports at signup. No card required.