Lake Preston, South Dakota.
Typical home $244,819 (+3.8% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$716 (+126%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $8,937 +4%
- $235,882$244,819 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $64,740 +36%
- $180,080$244,819 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.
- Lake Preston$1,285
- South Dakota$1,668
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 11 years.
Typical home values in Lake Preston, SD rose 3.8% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Lake Preston, Kingsbury County, South Dakota
Lake Preston is a city of 589 people in Kingsbury County. 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Lake Preston is a small city on the South Dakota prairie, with a population among the smallest of places that still count as cities. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, while summers are warm in July. Homes here are priced well below what many older homeowners elsewhere in the country would expect, and a four-year degree is less common among adults than across the country as a whole.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, restaurants and hotels, and transport and warehouses also employing many. Across Kingsbury County, the largest workplaces include Castlerock Construction, Good Samaritan Society and the De Smet School District. Jobs across the county have slipped a little from the year before, though unemployment there stays low, and the typical commute is moderate.
Things to do. Lake Preston is a lake in or beside town, and it gives the place its name. Lake Henry and Lake Whitewood are lakes a short drive away, and Lake Marsh is a lake a longer drive away. With cold, snowy winters and warm summers, the lakes are most likely to draw people out in the warmer months.
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- 269households
- 14%of adults have a degree
- 17%below the poverty line
- 23 mintypical commute
- 11%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, 9 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Kingsbury County
- Castlerock ConstructionFoundation, building, poured concrete, contractors53
- Good Samaritan SocietySkilled nursing facilities53
- De Smet School District 38-2School district49FTE
- Arlington School District 38-1School district46FTE
- Lake Preston School District 38-3School district42FTE
- American Engineered ProductsCounter units manufacturing38
- Iroquois School District 02-3School district36FTE
- De Smet Memorial HospitalCritical access hospital34FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 7 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 269 people in all across the county; Lake Preston has one of its own. 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
- Winter weatherVery high
- Cold wavesVery high
- Ice stormsVery high
- TornadoesVery high
- HailRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Lake Preston’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 Kingsbury County.
Lake Preston home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Lake Preston$244,819
- 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.
- Lake Preston8
Zip codes with a Lake Preston address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Lake Preston — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zillow publishes no zip-level series with this city on the address.