Florence, South Dakota.
Typical home $486,554 (+4.1% in a year). Watertown, SD metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,236 (+94%) since Feb 2022.
- 1 year
- Up $19,222 +4%
- $467,332$486,554 since Sep 2025
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.
- Florence$2,554
- South Dakota$1,668
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Florence, SD rose 4.1% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Florence, Codington County, South Dakota
Florence is a town of 337 people in Codington County. Half its households earn more than $75,909 a year and half less, against $72,727 across Codington County; 10% of its people live below the poverty line. 86% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 14% are rented. Unemployment in Codington County was 1.8% in August 2026, and the county had 0.4% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Codington 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Florence is a very small town in Codington County, South Dakota, where nearly everyone lives in a home they own. Household incomes run a little above the county's, and few adults hold a four-year degree. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, and summers are warm, with July the warmest; the year brings a fair amount of snow along with moderate rain and melted snow.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops and the building trades also employing many. Across Codington County, some of the largest workplaces are Terex in Watertown, which makes aerial work platforms, the Watertown School District, and Prairie Lakes Health Care Center. A typical commute is fairly long, and few people work from home.
Things to do. Water is the main draw here. Dry Lake is in or beside town, and Grass Lake and Lake Nicholson are a short drive away. Lake Kampeska is a longer drive, and is one of the larger lakes of the area.
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- 8%of adults have a degree
- 10%below the poverty line
- 25 mintypical commute
- 4%work from home
What people in Codington County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Codington County had 17,187 jobs in 2025, 0.4% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 21° and lows near 2°; warmest in July, with highs near 82° and lows near 60°. About 32 inches of snow and 23 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Rauville West weather station, 10 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Codington County
- Terex - WatertownAerial work platforms manufacturing730
- Watertown School District 14-4School district581FTE
- Prairie Lakes Health Care CenterGeneral hospital563FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters357
- Hy-VeeSupermarkets and other grocery except convenience stores255
- Dakota Bodies WatertownTruck bodies and cabs manufacturing246
- Lake Area Technical CollegeTwo-year college240
- Wurth Electronics MidcomTransformers, electronic component-types, manufacturing232
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 38 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 5,035 people in all across the county; Florence has one of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and colleges from IPEDS (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 weatherVery high
- Ice stormsRelatively high
- HailRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively 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 Florence’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 Codington County and the Watertown, SD metro.
Florence home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Florence$486,554
- 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.
Zip codes with a Florence address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Florence — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.