Box Elder, South Dakota.
Typical home $367,063 (+2.4% in a year), asking rent $1,450 (+3.2%). Rapid City, SD metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,075 (+126%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $8,488 +2%
- $358,575$367,063 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $75,618 +26%
- $291,446$367,063 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.
- Box Elder$1,927
- South Dakota$1,668
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 15 years.
Typical home values in Box Elder, SD rose 2.4% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Box Elder, SD rose 3.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Box Elder runs $1,177/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $1,226 in Apr 2025.
That is $2,627 a month against $1,450 rent: a $1,927 mortgage payment, plus $308 property tax and $393 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Box Elder
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$2,627
- Renting$1,450
- Mortgage only$1,927
Property tax · $308/mo 1.01% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Meade County, SD
Insurance & upkeep · $393/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Box Elder, Meade County, South Dakota
Box Elder is a city of 11,746 people in Meade County. Half its households earn more than $73,008 a year and half less, against $74,790 across Meade County; 8% of its people live below the poverty line. 48% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 52% are rented. Unemployment in Meade County was 2.1% in August 2026, and the county had 7.0% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then construction.
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. Box Elder is a young city, with residents who are younger on average than in most of the country, and more renters than owners. Household incomes run a little below the county's, and typical home values and rents are fairly high. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, while summers are warm, and the year brings only modest rain and melted snow.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by the building trades, shops and manufacturing. Douglas School District and VRC Metal Systems are among the town's largest workplaces. Unemployment across Meade County is low and has held steady over the past year, and the county has added jobs. A four-year degree is held by fewer adults here than the country as a whole, and the typical commute is short.
Things to do. The South Dakota Air and Space Museum is in or beside town. A short drive away are Dinosaur Park, a museum, and The Journey Museum and Gardens, a botanical garden. For a longer outing, Pactola Lake is a reservoir that sits a longer drive away.
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- 4,679households
- 28%of adults have a degree
- 8%below the poverty line
- 20 mintypical commute
- 7%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Meade County had 9,206 jobs in 2025, 7.0% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 36° and lows near 13°; warmest in July, with highs near 86° and lows near 58°. About 48 inches of snow and 17 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Rapid City Regional Airport weather station, 5 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Box Elder
- Douglas School District 51-1School district390FTE
- VRC Metal SystemsHot-rolling mill machinery, metalworking, manufacturing60
- Box Elder Events CenterPromoters of live performing arts productions with facilities41
- La Quinta Inn & SuitesHotels41
- Home2 SuitesHotels, resort, without casinos33
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 4 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 175 people in all. School districts come 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
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- HailRelatively high
- LightningRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- Wildfirerelatively high in parts of Box ElderRelatively moderate
- Ice stormsRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Box Elder’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively low. 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 Meade County and the Rapid City, SD metro.
Box Elder home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Box Elder$367,063
- South Dakota$317,874
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Box Elder listings — the market is roughly in balance.
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
Share of listings with a price cut
The early-warning dial: sellers cut when buyers stop reaching. Rising cuts cool a market months before prices notice.
- Box Elder25.98%
- United States26.90%
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Box Elder53
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Box Elder15
Zip codes with a Box Elder address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Box Elder — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.