Saint Lawrence, South Dakota.
Typical home $273,510 (+4.0% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$729 (+103%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $10,611 +4%
- $262,899$273,510 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $38,927 +17%
- $234,584$273,510 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.
- Saint Lawrence$1,436
- South Dakota$1,668
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 23 years.
Typical home values in Saint Lawrence, SD rose 4.0% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Saint Lawrence, Hand County, South Dakota
Saint Lawrence is a town of 163 people in Hand County. Unemployment in Hand County was 2.6% in August 2026, and the county had 1.3% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Hand County work in farming, then schools and health care.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Saint Lawrence is a very small town in Hand County, South Dakota, where neighbors are likely to know one another by sight. Typical home values sit well above what the county's modest incomes might suggest, and a four-year degree is uncommon among adults here. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, and summers turn properly warm by July. Precipitation is on the light side, so the seasons are defined more by temperature than by wet weather.
Work. Most residents work in farming, forestry and mining, with others employed in schools, hospitals and social care, in professional and business services, or in restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Across Hand County, some of the largest workplaces are Miller Schools, Avera Hand County Memorial Hospital and C & B Operations Miller, an agricultural machinery and equipment wholesaler. Unemployment across the county is a little higher than it was a year ago, and the county had fewer jobs last year than the year before. Very few people work from home.
Things to do. Ree Creek, a river, is a short drive away, and makes an easy outing for a walk or an afternoon by the water. Cottonwood Lake and Long Lake are both lakes a longer drive away, suited to a day trip. The Huron Wetland Management District, a protected area also a longer drive off, offers open country for those who enjoy watching the landscape and its wildlife.
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- 9%of adults have a degree
- 9%below the poverty line
- 2%work from home
What people in Hand County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Hand County had 1,430 jobs in 2025, 1.3% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 26° and lows near 7°; warmest in July, with highs near 85° and lows near 61°. About 44 inches of snow and 22 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Miller weather station, 2 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Hand County
- Miller 29-4 SchoolsSchool district84FTE
- Avera Hand County Memorial HospitalCritical access hospital51FTE
- C & B Operations MillerAgricultural machinery and equipment merchant wholesalers23
- Coborn's22
- South Dakota Soybean ProcessorsSoybean oil, cake, and meal, made in crushing mills22
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 4 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 147 people in all across the county; Saint Lawrence has none 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
- Cold wavesVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- Ice stormsRelatively moderate
- WildfireRelatively moderate
- Strong windRelatively moderate
- HailRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Saint Lawrence’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 Hand County.
Saint Lawrence home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Saint Lawrence$273,510
- 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 Saint Lawrence address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Saint Lawrence — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.