De Smet, South Dakota.
Typical home $246,971 (+3.3% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$682 (+111%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $7,957 +3%
- $239,014$246,971 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $42,486 +21%
- $204,485$246,971 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.
- De Smet$1,296
- South Dakota$1,668
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 18 years.
Typical home values in De Smet, SD rose 3.3% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in De Smet, Kingsbury County, South Dakota
De Smet is a city of 1,056 people in Kingsbury County. Half its households earn more than $67,321 a year and half less, against $74,000 across Kingsbury County; 5% of its people live below the poverty line. 85% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 15% are rented. Unemployment in Kingsbury County was 2.3% in August 2026, and the county had 2.6% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. De Smet is a small city in Kingsbury County, South Dakota, where almost everyone lives in a home they own. Household incomes run a little below the county's, and few residents live below the poverty line. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, and summers turn warm in July, with a fair amount of rain and melted snow across the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops, and banks, insurance and property close behind. Among the biggest local workplaces are De Smet School District, De Smet Memorial Hospital and UltiMed, a maker of needles and syringes. Unemployment in Kingsbury County is low, though the county has fewer jobs than it did a year earlier.
Things to do. Lakes are the main draw around De Smet. Silver Lake sits in or beside town, while Lake Henry and Spirit Lake are each a short drive away. Plum Lake and Lake Thompson are also close, and several more lakes lie a longer drive out.
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- 427households
- 22%of adults have a degree
- 5%below the poverty line
- 7%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Kingsbury County had 1,767 jobs in 2025, 2.6% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 23° and lows near 5°; warmest in July, with highs near 82° and lows near 61°. About 41 inches of snow and 26 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the De Smet weather station, under a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in De Smet
- De Smet School District 38-2School district49FTE
- De Smet Memorial HospitalCritical access hospital34FTE
- UltiMedHypodermic needles and syringes manufacturing20
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 2 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 69 people in all. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); 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
- Cold wavesVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- HailRelatively high
- Ice stormsRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in De Smet’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. 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 Kingsbury County.
De Smet home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- De Smet$246,971
- 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.
- De Smet16
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a De Smet address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls De Smet — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.