Press "Enter" to skip to content

South Dakota House Prices Rising Much Faster Than Income

What good is freedom if you can’t afford a place to live?

Bart Pfankuch reports that South Dakota incomes aren’t keeping up with the increasing house prices:

According to the South Dakota Realtors Association, the statewide median home sales price rose by 54% from 2018 to 2022. Meanwhile, median household incomes in South Dakota rose by only 17% during that time, even with a healthy 10.4% household income jump from 2020 to 2021, according to the U.S. Census.

“I would say the American Dream of homeownership is wounded in South Dakota right now,” said Ron Sassy, a Black Hills real estate agent and former member of the Rapid City Council. “It’s not dead, but it’s tough out there for homebuyers, especially when you start looking at the middle to lower incomes, it’s definitely a lot tougher to buy a home right now” [Bart Pfankuch, “Hurdles to Homeownership: Why Buying a Home Is Out of Reach for Many South Dakota Residents,” South Dakota News Watch, 2022.12.13].

Liberty isn’t an abstraction. Liberty depends on our practical ability to enjoy it. High home prices impinge on practical liberty:

The inability to obtain homeownership has fueled concerns that more South Dakotans will be trapped in rental properties, be unable to pursue the goal of raising their families in a home they own, or that they must sacrifice living standards in order to afford a home purchase. Furthermore, if first-time homebuyers are shut out of the market, it could prevent them from getting ahead financially and break the long-held cycle in which families start small and then increase the size and value of home purchases as they go through life [Pfankuch, 2022.12.13].

But hey, at least we can pick on transgender people, right?

20 Comments

  1. sx123 2022-12-19 07:35

    This problem is country wide and what happens with runaway inflation. In general, either keep inflation contained or wages need to rise as quickly as inflation, which causes more inflation…

    It’s like runaway global warming. Species can’t adapt fast enough to the rate of change.

  2. larry kurtz 2022-12-19 08:14

    Even Wall is making space for housing developments so can Newell, Mud Butte and Faith be far behind? Where will all the people working at the Ramen factory in Belle going to live?

  3. P. Aitch 2022-12-19 08:38

    You’re right on, Cory Heidelberger.
    For SD Republicans to label themselves “White Victims” there must be villains like transgender citizens to persecute.
    It’s how SDGOP attempts to raise its gutter level self-esteem.

  4. grudznick 2022-12-19 08:55

    What is it that ties the housing issue to some mean people making fun of transgender people? This seems like just a gratuitous lashing out of NDS and naught but another argumentum ad hominem.

  5. larry kurtz 2022-12-19 09:09

    Realtor.com has a listing in Faith for $155,000!

  6. larry kurtz 2022-12-19 09:11

    Because of Mrs. Noem’s racist bent motel rooms were going for thousands per night during the LNI.

  7. grudznick 2022-12-19 11:29

    Must have been some pretty swanky hotel rooms. I wonder how Ms. Uhre made out.

  8. P. Aitch 2022-12-19 11:50

    grudznichts – If you don’t understand something, think harder. Also, when you get so upset at “gratuitous lashing out of NDS”; it means we got your goat, didn’t we? Actually, when you ponder whether we got your goat, we got another goat again. NDS is a pretty swell bait, isn’t it? Got another one, didn’t we? Laughing, laughing, laughing …

  9. John 2022-12-19 12:08

    Nationwide, one of big problems inflating housing prices and reducing housing availability is Wall Street speculators buying up single family residences to generate rental income. Some suburban neighborhoods are 30% rentals. That will eventually crater home values since corporations and renters barely care for rental residential property.
    In South Dakota communities from Sioux Falls to Lead/Deadwood are working to clamp down on this rental property greed.

  10. O 2022-12-19 13:54

    I would say this is more of a housing bubble 2.0 rather than inflation: the investor class is pricing housing out of the range of the working class. Income inequality strikes again.

  11. Jake 2022-12-19 15:33

    grudz, Those recently graduated teachers seeking employment here in the lowest paid teacher’s state need to have somewhere to live and correct papers, cook, raise kids and too, ya know! And, how do they make the bills pay each month to teach our kids?

  12. Mark Anderson 2022-12-19 16:03

    Grudz skipped his breakfast. Inflation you know.

  13. grudznick 2022-12-19 18:52

    quoting all from above:

    blah blah blah we think more about grudznick than anything else blah blah

    ALL your goats R belong to grudznick

  14. larry kurtz 2022-12-19 19:03

    Workers who endure -55 wind chills and governance under a cracker using her office for personal gain should receive hazardous duty pay, maybe even a housing allowance but since ignorance is bliss driving from Kadoka where property is cheap to Rapid City where the jobs are is simply the cost of freedom, right?

  15. grudznick 2022-12-19 19:11

    Ah, Kadoka. The garden spot of the northern Badlands. People will soon begin to buy up trailer lots there in bulk and property taxes will skyrocket.

  16. larry kurtz 2022-12-19 20:30

    New Underwood is a cheap building locale just a few clicks downstream from the toxic waste dump and target that is Ellsworth Air Force Base.

  17. Mark Anderson 2022-12-19 20:36

    Maybe grudz did eat a liberal breakfast.

  18. grudznick 2022-12-19 20:49

    Liberal servings of sausage gravy and hash browned potatoes, indeed. Every day, Mr. Anderson, I eat a liberal breakfast.

Comments are closed.