Hill City, South Dakota.
Typical home $479,030 (+2.5% in a year). Rapid City, SD metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,511 (+151%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $11,680 +2%
- $467,350$479,030 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $104,561 +28%
- $374,469$479,030 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.
- Hill City$2,514
- 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 Hill City, SD rose 2.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Hill City, Pennington County, South Dakota
Hill City is a city of 872 people in Pennington County. Half its households earn more than $95,385 a year and half less, against $74,517 across Pennington County; 3% of its people live below the poverty line. Unemployment in Pennington County was 2.1% in August 2026, and the county had 0.5% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Pennington County work in schools and health care, then shops.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Hill City is a very small city in the Black Hills, where most households do comfortably: incomes run well above the county's, and few people live below the poverty line. Homes here are costly, and a good share of adults hold a four-year degree. Winters are cold and snowy, with January highs staying near freezing and nights well below it, while summers are warm and the year brings a fair amount of rain and melted snow.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, in the building trades, and in restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Unemployment across Pennington County is low and unchanged from a year ago, and the county has added a few more jobs than the year before. Some of the biggest workplaces across the county are Monument Health Rapid City Hospital, the Rapid City Area School District and the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, and a small number of residents work from home.
Things to do. In or beside town, the Black Hills Central Railroad is a museum for anyone curious about the area's railroad past, and Newton Fork runs close by. A short drive away are Sylvan Lake, a reservoir in the hills, and Sheridan Lake, another reservoir good for time by the water. A longer drive brings you to Wind Cave National Park, a national park famed for its cave.
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- 280households
- 35%of adults have a degree
- 3%below the poverty line
- 8%work from home
What people in Pennington County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Pennington County had 62,445 jobs in 2025, 0.5% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 40° and lows near 10°; warmest in July, with highs near 83° and lows near 51°. About 67 inches of snow and 22 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Hill City weather station, under a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Pennington County
- Monument Health Rapid City HospitalGeneral hospital2,921FTE
- Rapid City Area School District 51-4School district1,574FTE
- Quanta ServicesPower and communication line and related structures construction572
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters530
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters467
- South Dakota School of Mines and TechnologyUniversity or college458
- Douglas School District 51-1School district390FTE
- Menards"all other miscellaneous wood product manufacturing"376
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 126 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 13,099 people in all across the county; Hill City has one of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) 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
- WildfireVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- Inland floodingVery high
- HailRelatively high
- LightningRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Hill City’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 Pennington County and the Rapid City, SD metro.
Hill City home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Hill City$479,030
- South Dakota$317,874
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 3 Hill City 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.
- Hill City30.80%
- United States26.90%
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Hill City22
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Hill City6
Zip codes with a Hill City address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Hill City — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.