Alcester, South Dakota.
Typical home $301,816 (+3.8% in a year). Sioux City, IA-NE-SD metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$926 (+141%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $11,128 +4%
- $290,688$301,816 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $84,719 +39%
- $217,098$301,816 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Alcester$1,584
- South Dakota$1,668
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 11 years.
Typical home values in Alcester, SD rose 3.8% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Alcester, Union County, South Dakota
Alcester is a city of 820 people in Union County. Half its households earn more than $57,000 a year and half less, against $89,636 across Union County; 12% of its people live below the poverty line. 69% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 31% are rented. Unemployment in Union County was 2.6% in August 2026, and the county had 0.7% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Union County work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Alcester is a small city in Union County, in the southeastern corner of South Dakota. Incomes here run well below the county's, and homes are mostly lived in by their owners. Winters are cold, with a good deal of snow, and summers turn properly warm.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, in manufacturing, in shops and in the building trades. Across Union County, some of the larger workplaces are Lunchtime Solutions, FIMCO Plants and Thermo Bond Buildings. Jobs across the county dipped slightly last year, while unemployment there stayed low.
Things to do. Newton Hills State Park, a protected area, is a longer drive away and suits walks among the trees. The National Music Museum, also a longer drive away, is one of the better known places of its kind in the region. For time near water, the Vermillion River is a longer drive away as well.
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- 374households
- 20%of adults have a degree
- 12%below the poverty line
- 5%work from home
What people in Union County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Union County had 9,566 jobs in 2025, 0.7% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 27° and lows near 7°; warmest in July, with highs near 85° and lows near 62°. About 31 inches of snow and 30 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Hawarden weather station, 7 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Union County
- Lunchtime SolutionsCafeteria food services contractors616
- FIMCO PlantsSprayers and dusters, farm-type, manufacturing373
- Makers Pride North Sioux CityBakery products, dry, manufacturing300
- Thermo Bond BuildingsPrefabricated wood buildings manufacturing268
- Riverside TechnologiesComputer peripheral equipment merchant wholesalers202
- Siouxland Surgery CenterGeneral hospital193FTE
- Dakota Valley School District 61-8School district179FTE
- empirical technology, inc. - Corporate OfficeCorporate offices119
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 21 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 2,838 people in all across the county; Alcester has one of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- TornadoesVery high
- HailVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- DroughtRelatively high
- Ice stormsRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Alcester’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively high. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Union County and the Sioux City, IA-NE-SD metro.
Alcester home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Alcester$301,816
- South Dakota$317,874
- United States$366,157
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Alcester7
Zip codes with a Alcester address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Alcester — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.