Estelline, South Dakota.
Typical home $273,813 (+9.3% in a year). Watertown, SD metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$796 (+124%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $23,356 +9%
- $250,457$273,813 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $60,495 +28%
- $213,318$273,813 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.
- Estelline$1,437
- South Dakota$1,668
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 14 years.
Typical home values in Estelline, SD rose 9.3% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Estelline, Hamlin County, South Dakota
Estelline is a city of 749 people in Hamlin County. Half its households earn more than $78,438 a year and half less, against $87,101 across Hamlin County; 8% of its people live below the poverty line. 82% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 18% are rented. Unemployment in Hamlin County was 1.5% in August 2026, and the county had 2.8% more 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Estelline is a very small city in Hamlin County, where nearly everyone knows one another. Most homes are lived in by their owners, and residents are younger than in many small towns. Incomes run below the county's, and typical home values are modest. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, and summers are warm in July, with moderate rain and melted snow over the year.
Work. Residents work mainly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, farming and the building trades also common. Across Hamlin County, the largest workplaces include Agropur Lake Norden, a cheese maker, the Hamlin School District, and Legacy Healthcare, which runs nursing homes. Unemployment in the county is low and unchanged from a year earlier, and the county has added jobs over the past year. Commutes are fairly short, and very few people work from home.
Things to do. Water is the main draw here. Bullhead Run and Hidewood Creek run in or beside town, and Oakwood Lakes State Park, a protected natural area, is a short drive away. For a longer day out, Lake Marsh is a longer drive away.
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- 287households
- 21%of adults have a degree
- 8%below the poverty line
- 21 mintypical commute
- 2%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Hamlin County had 2,703 jobs in 2025, 2.8% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 20° and lows near 2°; warmest in July, with highs near 81° and lows near 58°. About 25 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Castlewood weather station, 12 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Hamlin County
- Agropur Lake NordenCheese manufacturing440
- Hamlin School District 28-3School district104FTE
- Legacy HealthcareNursing homes71
- Hamlin Building CenterLumber retailing yards70
- Efraimson Electric Inc BryantLow voltage electrical work57
- RiverviewDairy cattle farming52
- GarfieldDairy cattle farming51
- JR DistributingAnimal feeds, prepared, manufacturing49
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 9 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 867 people in all across the county; Estelline has one of its own. 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
- Strong windVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- Cold wavesVery high
- Ice stormsRelatively high
- HailRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Estelline’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 Hamlin County and the Watertown, SD metro.
Estelline home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Estelline$273,813
- 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.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Estelline address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Estelline — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.