Free South Dakota Residential Lease Agreement

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A configurable South Dakota residential lease agreement that generates a signable multi-page PDF. Built to SDCL chapters 43-32, 21-16 and 43-8 — including the deposit return that became twenty-one days on 1 July 2026, the one-month ceiling that counts every deposit however denominated, and the statutory notice to quit South Dakota repealed in 2024.

South Dakota SDCL ch. 43-32 21-Day Deposit Return Free PDF 2026 Edition

A South Dakota residential lease agreement is the written contract governed by SDCL chapter 43-32, with the eviction procedure in chapter 21-16 and the estate-at-will notice in chapter 43-8. South Dakota never adopted the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, so its rules sit in an old general leasing chapter descended from the 1877 Civil Code and amended piecemeal ever since — and that history is exactly why generic templates get South Dakota wrong. Two changes in the last two legislative sessions have left almost every South Dakota lease template in circulation stating law that is no longer in force. Since 1 July 2026 the security deposit must be returned or accounted for within twenty-one days, not fourteen. Since 1 July 2024 there has been no statutory notice to quit at all, because the section that required it was repealed outright. On top of those, the one-month deposit ceiling reaches every deposit however denominated, the entry notice must carry four specific things and its window must fall within normal business hours, and the one month’s rent everybody quotes as a repair-and-deduct cap is not a cap at all. The generator below builds a lease that reflects each of those rules as the statute actually reads, verified section by section against the South Dakota Legislature’s own published text on 6 August 2026.

Complete the fields below to generate a South Dakota residential lease agreement as a signable multi-page PDF. Every field you fill is written into the document, including the utility allocations, the running total of every deposit against the statutory ceiling, the entry protocol you elect under SDCL 43-32-32, the termination regime you name, and each disclosure you check — and the generated lease cites the controlling South Dakota section at each point. Before you hand keys to anyone, run proper tenant screening; the lease governs the relationship, screening decides whether you want it. Pair the signed lease with a South Dakota move-in / move-out checklist, because SDCL 43-32-24 measures every lawful deduction against “their condition at the commencement of the tenancy” and South Dakota gives you no statutory condition statement to lean on.

Three enacted changes, and they are the reason almost every South Dakota lease template in circulation is now wrong. South Dakota acts that carry no emergency clause take effect on the first day of July after passage, under SDCL 2-14-16, so each of these has a hard date.

1 July 2026 — the deposit return became twenty-one days. 2026 Senate Bill 4 became chapter 179 of the 2026 Session Laws. Its enrolled text amends SDCL 43-32-24 and the Legislative Research Council’s own 2026 Title Summaries memorandum describes it in one line: it “increases, from fourteen days to twenty-one days, the time within which a landlord must return a tenant’s security deposit after termination of a tenancy.” The bill was signed by the Governor on 12 February 2026, carried no emergency clause, and passed both chambers on the consent calendar without amendment. Every page currently ranking for this query still says fourteen days or two weeks.

1 July 2024 — the statutory notice to quit was repealed outright. 2024 Senate Bill 90 became chapter 75 of the 2024 Session Laws. Section 1 of that act reads, in full, “That § 21-16-2 be REPEALED.” Section 2 amended SDCL 21-16-7 to add a thirty-day publication alternative to the five-day appearance rule. The act was signed on 26 March 2024. SDCL 21-16-2 still resolves on the Legislature’s own site, where the entire text of the section now reads “Repealed.” A South Dakota landlord no longer owes any statutory pre-suit notice before commencing a forcible entry and detainer action.

1 July 2024 — the estate-at-will notice was reduced to fifteen days, with a new military exception. 2024 Senate Bill 89 became chapter 178 of the 2024 Session Laws and was signed the same day. SDCL 43-8-8 now requires the landlord’s notice to terminate a residential estate at will to specify a period of not less than fifteen days, and the same act created a protection that appears on no template we could find: where the tenancy at will is the residence of a tenant on active military service, or where a person on active military service is an immediate family member of the tenant, the tenant is entitled to two months’ notice — unless the tenant has engaged in sustained conduct that is disruptive, illegal, destructive or negligent toward the maintenance of the property or amounts to a material breach of the implied lease conditions, or unless the landlord has sold the property or it has passed to the landlord’s estate. For that section, an immediate family member is a spouse or a minor child. The same act moved commercial estates at will into a brand-new SDCL 43-8-8.1, where the notice period is one month.

A note on how we know the period was reduced. South Dakota enrolled acts restate the whole amended section and carry no strike-through or other amendment markup, so an enrolled act shows what a section now says and never what it used to say. That the fifteen days is current law we read directly, in both the codified section and the enrolled act. That it represents a reduction we take from the bill’s own title — “An Act to reduce the notice requirement period to terminate a tenancy at will” — and from chapter 178 of 2024 being the most recent entry in the section’s source line. We have not seen the previous figure struck, so we do not state one here.

Also 1 July 2026, and worth knowing: 2026 House Bill 1014, chapter 93 of the 2026 Session Laws, amended SDCL 16-2-58.2 so that the twenty-five dollar “commission on equal access to our courts” surcharge otherwise payable by a responding party on an answer may not be collected in any civil action or proceeding for forcible entry and detainer. It removes a real cost barrier to a South Dakota tenant filing an answer in an eviction, and it appears on none of the ranking pages.

Two 2026 acts did change the definition of “service animal” in South Dakota law, and their effect on a lease is subtler than it looks. Senate Bill 81 amended SDCL 40-1-38, the offence of injuring or harassing a service animal, and Senate Bill 82 added a new section to SDCL chapter 22-35 creating an offence of misrepresenting an animal as a service animal in a place of public accommodation. Both were signed on 9 March 2026, and both define a service animal narrowly as a dog trained to do work or perform tasks, adding expressly that “the crime deterrent effects of a dog’s presence and the provision of emotional support, well-being, comfort, or companionship do not constitute work or tasks.” Neither act touched chapter 43-32. South Dakota therefore now carries two different statutory definitions of the same phrase, and the one that governs a tenancy is still the broad one in SDCL 43-32-33.

Beyond those, nothing. The Legislative Research Council publishes a per-session memorandum stating, title by title, every act codified in each title of the Codified Laws — and saying so expressly where none was. Read for SDCL Title 43 and Title 21 across both the 2025 and 2026 sessions, it confirms that no 2025 act touched chapter 43-32 or chapter 21-16 at all, and that the only 2026 acts in Title 43 besides Senate Bill 4 concern court modification of conveyance restrictions and foreign ownership of agricultural land.

South Dakota recognises the standard range of residential arrangements, and the type matters more here than in most states because it decides which of three termination regimes applies.

A fixed-term lease runs for a stated period and, under SDCL 43-32-22, terminates by the expiration of the agreed term. No notice is needed to end it and no South Dakota statute requires a landlord to announce an intention not to renew. A month-to-month tenancy renews each month; where the parties never specified a term at all, SDCL 43-32-15 deems the hiring renewed unless a party gives notice at least as long before expiry as the term of the hiring itself, not exceeding one month. A week-to-week tenancy runs on the same rule and therefore takes one week’s notice. An estate at will — a tenancy with no fixed term terminable at either party’s pleasure — is governed instead by SDCL 43-8-8 and takes not less than fifteen days from the landlord.

Where the parties are silent about length, South Dakota does not default to month-to-month, whatever the ranking guides say. SDCL 43-32-3 provides that “a hiring of real property, other than lodgings in places where there is no usage on the subject, is presumed to be for one year from its commencement unless otherwise expressed in the hiring.” The month-to-month answer comes from a different section, SDCL 43-32-4, which applies to lodgings: a hiring of lodgings for an unspecified term is presumed to be for the length of time the parties adopt for estimating the rent, so a weekly rate presumes a week, and only “in the absence of any agreement respecting the length of time of the rent” is the hiring presumed monthly. Getting that backwards changes how long a tenant may stay and what notice ends the arrangement.

South Dakota also caps how long a lease may run. Under SDCL 43-32-2, no lease or grant of agricultural land reserving any rent or service for longer than twenty years is valid, and no lease or grant of any municipal lot reserving rent or service for longer than ninety-nine years is valid. And under SDCL 43-32-5, no agreement for the leasing of real property for a period longer than one year is valid unless it, or a note or memorandum of it, is in writing signed by the lessor or the lessor’s agent authorised in writing. Note whose signature the section names. The general statute of frauds in SDCL 53-8-2(3) approaches the same ground from the other direction, requiring a writing subscribed by the party to be charged.

One month’s rent — and the ceiling counts every deposit you take, whatever you call it. SDCL 43-32-6.1 is two sentences and most summaries quote only the second.

That first sentence is the whole game. It is a deeming rule: it does not ask what you called the money, it asks what the money does. If its function is to secure performance of the rental agreement or any part of it, it is a security deposit. Combine that with “however denominated” in the second sentence and the consequence is direct — a pet deposit, a cleaning deposit, a key deposit, a redecoration deposit and last month’s rent held as security all sit inside the same single month’s rent. South Dakota has no separate pet-deposit allowance, and it has no furnished or unfurnished tier. A landlord who takes one month as a security deposit and then adds a pet deposit on top has almost certainly breached the section, however the paperwork describes the second payment. That is why the builder above puts each of them in its own field and prints the running total on the face of the lease.

The exception is narrow and it has two conditions, both of which the ranking pages soften. The larger deposit must be agreed upon between the lessor and the lessee, and there must be special conditions posing a danger to maintenance of the premises. Notice what that is not. It is not the tenant’s credit score, criminal history or income. It is not the mere fact of keeping a pet, though a specific animal’s characteristics might in principle be a special condition. And it is not, as the deepest ranking page renders it, a condition where “the tenant poses a danger to the maintenance of the premises” — the statute speaks of conditions, not of the tenant. If you rely on the exception, write the special condition into the lease, which is what the builder does.

Twenty-one days — and the clock starts on two events, not on move-out. This is the single most valuable correction on this page, because every competing South Dakota resource still states the old figure.

SDCL 43-32-24 requires every lessor of residential premises, “within twenty-one days after the termination of the tenancy and receipt of the tenant’s mailing address or delivery instructions,” either to return the security deposit or to furnish the tenant a written statement showing the specific reason for withholding the deposit or any portion of it. Read that structure carefully, because two things follow that the summaries miss.

First, it is one deadline with two ways of satisfying it, not a return deadline plus a separate statement deadline. A landlord who intends to withhold satisfies the section by getting a written statement of the specific reason out within the twenty-one days; a landlord who intends to return everything satisfies it by returning the money.

Second, the clock is conjunctive. It runs from the termination of the tenancy and from receipt of the tenant’s mailing address or delivery instructions. A tenant who moves out and disappears without leaving an address has not started the clock. Equally, a landlord who receives a forwarding address a fortnight after move-out has twenty-one days from that later event. Every ranking page states the deadline as running from the end of the tenancy alone, and one states it as running from receipt of the address alone; the statute requires both.

There is then a second, later, conditional document. Within forty-five days after termination of the tenancy, upon request of the lessee, the lessor must provide the lessee with an itemized accounting of any deposit withheld. It is triggered by the tenant asking for it, it runs to a longer period, and it is not a substitute for the written statement of the specific reason that is due inside the twenty-one days. Conflating the two is how the deepest ranking page ends up printing “landlords have 45 days to return deposits” in its own overview box while its security deposit chapter says fourteen.

The landlord forfeits the right to keep any of it — and bad faith adds a separate, small penalty on top. SDCL 43-32-24 carries two distinct sanctions and they are constantly merged.

The first is automatic: “Any lessor of residential premises who fails to comply with this section forfeits all rights to withhold any portion of the deposit.” That consequence follows from non-compliance itself. It does not require bad faith, it does not require intent, and it does not scale with how late the landlord was. Miss the twenty-one days, or send a statement that does not show the specific reason, and the right to retain a single dollar is gone regardless of how much damage the tenant actually did. In practical terms this is a far heavier sanction than the second one, and it is the sanction the rankers almost never lead with.

The second is discretionary and capped: “The bad faith retention of a deposit, or any portion of a deposit, by a lessor of residential premises, in violation of this section, or the bad faith failure to provide the written statement or itemized accounting, as required by this section, subjects the lessor to punitive damages not to exceed two hundred dollars.” Note that bad faith attaches to the failure to provide the itemized accounting as well as to the retention itself.

What South Dakota does not have is any multiple of the deposit. There is no double-damages remedy and no treble-damages remedy in chapter 43-32. The deepest ranking page tells its readers that South Dakota tenants “can sue for up to double the amount of the security deposit withheld improperly.” No section says so. If you have seen a doubling rule attributed to South Dakota, it has been carried across from a state that has one.

Two heads of deduction, stated as a closed list. SDCL 43-32-24 permits the lessor to withhold “only the amounts reasonably necessary to”:

Head (1)(b) is the one that rewards good drafting. “Other funds due to the landlord pursuant to an agreement” means the lease itself is what creates the debt that can then be deducted — a late fee, an agreed utility reimbursement or an agreed pet charge is deductible because and only because the lease made it payable. A landlord who never wrote the obligation down has nothing to deduct under that head.

Head (2) is measured against “their condition at the commencement of the tenancy, ordinary wear and tear excepted.” That is a comparison, and South Dakota gives you no statutory move-in condition statement to make it with — unlike North Dakota, Montana or Georgia, chapter 43-32 contains no condition-statement section at all. The evidential burden therefore falls entirely on whatever record the parties chose to make. A dated, signed, photographed move-in inventory is worth more in a South Dakota deposit dispute than any clause in the lease, which is why we pair this generator with a separate South Dakota move-in / move-out checklist. When the money is finally accounted for, a South Dakota security deposit itemization is the document that does the work the statute describes.

No, and no — and this is a negative finding worth stating plainly, because three ranking pages say otherwise. Reading all forty sections of SDCL chapter 43-32 end to end establishes that South Dakota imposes no separate-account duty, no escrow, no trust account, no bank notification, no deposit receipt and no obligation to pay interest on a residential security deposit. A South Dakota landlord may lawfully hold the deposit in general funds.

One widely read guide states flatly that “landlords are required to hold security deposits in a separate account and cannot commingle them with other funds” and that “interest earned on the deposit also belongs to the tenant.” Neither proposition has any South Dakota source. Another invents a furnished tier, telling readers the maximum is “one month’s rent for an unfurnished unit or one and a half month’s rent for a furnished unit.” SDCL 43-32-6.1 draws no such distinction. These are not shades of interpretation; they are duties from other states presented as South Dakota law, and a landlord who follows them is doing unnecessary work while a tenant who relies on them is asserting a right that does not exist.

One genuine complication does exist, and it cuts the other way. Commercial deposits run on entirely different clocks under SDCL 43-32-24.1, added in 2019: sixty days to return or furnish the written statement, and ninety days for the itemized accounting on request. The 2026 amendment did not touch them. A South Dakota landlord who holds both residential and commercial deposits is now working to twenty-one days on one and sixty on the other, which is a genuine diary risk for a mixed portfolio.

Reasonable notice — with twenty-four hours’ written notice presumed reasonable, and four things every notice must contain. SDCL 43-32-32 is one of the more carefully drafted sections in chapter 43-32 and almost nothing in circulation reproduces it accurately.

The twenty-four hours is a presumption, not a rule. The general standard is reasonable notice and entry at reasonable times; twenty-four hours’ written notice is simply the amount the statute presumes to be reasonable. And the presumption is expressly displaceable — it applies “unless alternate methods of notification or times for entry are mutually agreed upon between the landlord and tenant in the lease.” The statute names the lease as the instrument that can fix a different protocol, which is a genuine drafting lever and the reason the builder above makes it an express election rather than boilerplate.

Every notice must specify four things, and no ranking page lists all of them: the date or dates of entry; a period of time during normal business hours for entry; the purpose of the intended entry; and a means by which the tenant may request to reschedule the entry. The second and fourth are the ones that get dropped. “During normal business hours” is materially narrower than the “reasonable times” that summaries quote — a notice proposing a Saturday evening inspection does not meet it. And the rescheduling route is a positive requirement of the notice itself, not a courtesy; a notice that offers the tenant no way to ask for a different time is deficient on the face of the section. Our South Dakota notice to enter form is built to carry all four.

There are exactly two exceptions, and abandonment is not one of them. The section excuses notice “in case of an emergency or if it is impracticable to do so.” That is the complete list. One ranking guide tells landlords they “may also enter if they reasonably believe the tenant has abandoned the premises” — a rule that exists in several neighbouring states and does not exist in South Dakota. Chapter 43-32 does deal with property left behind after a tenant has quit, in sections 43-32-25 and 43-32-26, but those sections govern what happens to the goods, not a right of entry, and neither creates an exception to 43-32-32.

South Dakota attaches no specific statutory penalty to an improper entry. What it provides instead is SDCL 43-32-29, which preserves all other rights and remedies of lessor and lessee under any other provision of law, and SDCL 43-32-6, which prices an unlawful exclusion of the tenant at two months’ rent plus the return of advance rent and deposit. An entry practice that shades into excluding the tenant, or into interrupting essential services, moves out of the notice section and into a section with real money attached.

Reasonable repair, fitness for human habitation, and good and safe working order — across the premises and all common areas, and the duty cannot be contracted away. SDCL 43-32-8 applies “in every hiring of residential premises, whether in writing or parol,” so an oral South Dakota tenancy carries the same duty as a written one.

The lessor must keep the premises and all common areas in reasonable repair, fit for human habitation, and in good and safe working order during the term of the lease; and must maintain in good and safe working order and condition all electrical, plumbing, or heating systems. Both duties carry the same exception: they do not extend to disrepair “caused by the negligent, willful or malicious conduct of the lessee or a person under his direction or control.” That last phrase matters — a tenant is answerable not only for their own conduct but for that of guests and others under their direction or control.

The duty is non-waivable. The second paragraph of the section says so in terms: “The parties to a lease or hiring of residential premises may not waive or modify the requirements imposed by this section.” Any clause in any South Dakota lease that purports to shift general repair responsibility to the tenant, or to have the tenant accept the premises “as is,” is void to that extent. There is exactly one permitted variation, and it is narrow: “the lessor may agree with the lessee that the lessee shall perform specified repairs or maintenance in lieu of rent.” Both halves are conditions. The repairs must be specified rather than general, and the consideration must be rent relief rather than the tenancy itself.

Two further sentences of 43-32-8 are worth knowing. The section is expressly “in addition to any covenants or conditions imposed by law or ordinance or by the terms of the lease,” so a municipal housing code stacks on top of it rather than replacing it. And “nothing in this section shall be construed to alter the liability of the lessor or lessee of residential premises for injury to third parties,” so it settles the landlord-tenant question without touching a visitor’s claim.

The tenant’s mirror duty is in a different section, and this is where the deepest ranking page inverts South Dakota law outright. SDCL 43-32-10 provides that in every hiring of residential premises the lessee shall preserve the premises, appliances, appurtenances and other leased personality in good condition, and repair all deteriorations or damage occasioned by the lessee’s negligent, willful or malicious conduct or that of persons acting under the lessee’s direction or control. That page cites 43-32-8 for the tenant’s duty and 43-32-10 is absent from it altogether. The two are back to front.

Both — and the “one month’s rent” that every ranking page calls a cap is not a cap at all. SDCL 43-32-9 creates two separate routes and the one month’s rent is the line between them.

Route one, below one month’s rent: repair and deduct, uncapped. If, within a reasonable time after notice to the lessor of conditions requiring repair to make the premises fit for human habitation and to place them in good and safe working order which the lessor ought to repair, the lessor neglects to do so, “the lessee may repair the same himself and deduct the expense of such repairs from the rent, or otherwise recover it from the lessor; or the lessee may vacate the premises, in which case he shall be discharged from additional charges of rent or performance of other conditions.” No dollar limit and no fraction-of-rent limit appears anywhere in that sentence. The rankers state it as “a tenant can deduct up to one month’s rent to cover a critical repair.” That number is nowhere in this half of the section.

Route two, above one month’s rent: rent escrow, and no court required. The one month’s rent appears in the section’s second paragraph, and it is a threshold: “If the cost of necessary repairs exceeds one month’s rent, after written notice stating the specific reason for the withholding, the lessee may withhold payment of rent and immediately deposit it in a separate bank or savings and loan account, written evidence of such action to be provided to the lessor upon deposit, maintained only for the purpose of making repairs until such time as the lessor makes the repairs, at which time the lessee shall release the deposit to the lessor or until sufficient money is accumulated in the account for the lessee to cause the repairs to be made and paid for.”

Three conditions are built into that sentence and tenants lose the protection by missing them: written notice stating the specific reason for the withholding must come first; the rent must be deposited immediately in a separate bank or savings and loan account; and written evidence of the deposit must be provided to the lessor upon deposit. What is not required is a court order. Two ranking pages tell tenants that above one month’s rent they must “ask a court to sort it out” or “consult with legal experts”; the statute sets up a self-executing escrow and says nothing about a judge. The account then unwinds one of two ways — released to the lessor when the repairs are made, or drawn on by the lessee once enough has accumulated to have the repairs done.

Neither route requires the landlord to act within a fixed number of days. The standard throughout is “within a reasonable time after notice.” The deepest ranking page tells tenants “repairs [are] to be made within 14 days after providing written notice to the landlord,” citing SDCL 43-32-19. That section is Termination of lease by tenant — Causes, and no fourteen-day repair deadline exists anywhere in South Dakota law.

Two months’ rent, plus the return of every dollar of advance rent and deposit — and the tenant keeps a choice of three other remedies on top. SDCL 43-32-6 is the section most South Dakota templates skip entirely, and it is the one with the largest number attached to it.

The section first states the landlord’s basic covenant: “A lessor shall deliver the leased premises to the lessee and secure his quiet enjoyment thereof against all lawful claimants.” It then provides that if the lessor of residential property unlawfully removes or excludes the tenant from the premises, or willfully diminishes services to the tenant by interrupting or causing the interruption of electric, gas, water, or other essential service, the tenant may sue for injunctive relief, recover possession by suit, or terminate the rental agreement — “and, in any case, recover from the lessor damages in an amount equal to two months rent and the return of any advance rent and deposit paid to the lessor by the lessee.”

Read the structure. The three remedies are alternatives; the tenant picks one. The money is not an alternative — “in any case” means it comes on top of whichever route the tenant chooses. So a South Dakota landlord who changes the locks on a tenant in arrears, or shuts the power off to force a move-out, faces two months’ rent plus the return of all advance rent and the entire deposit, whether or not the tenant also sues for possession. There is no lawful self-help eviction in South Dakota, and the alternative — a forcible entry and detainer action — is now quicker than it was, since no statutory notice to quit is required to start it.

Note also what the section reaches. “Willfully diminishes services… by interrupting or causing the interruption of” catches the landlord who simply stops paying a utility bill in their own name as surely as one who pulls a meter. Where the lease allocates a utility to the landlord, non-payment is a route into this section, which is why the builder above records each allocation expressly.

South Dakota has three, they live in two different chapters, and which one applies depends on how the tenancy arose. Almost every guide collapses them into a single “thirty days for month-to-month” answer, which is not what any of the three sections says.

Regime one — a periodic hiring, SDCL 43-32-15. “A hiring of real property for a term not specified by the parties is deemed to be renewed as stated in § 43-32-14 at the end of the term implied by law unless one of the parties gives notice to the other of his intention to terminate the same at least as long before the expiration thereof as the term of the hiring itself, not exceeding one month.” The notice period is therefore a function of the rental period: one month for a monthly hiring, one week for a weekly one, and never more than a month however long the implied term.

Regime two — a residential estate at will, SDCL 43-8-8. The landlord’s notice is not less than fifteen days, specified in the notice, given in the manner prescribed by SDCL 43-8-9. That figure has stood since 1 July 2024, when 2024 Senate Bill 89 — an act whose title is “to reduce the notice requirement period to terminate a tenancy at will” — took effect; because South Dakota enrolled acts carry no strike-through, we state the current period rather than a former one. And where the tenancy at will is the residence of a tenant on active military service, or where a person on active military service is an immediate family member of the tenant — defined in the section as a spouse or minor child — the tenant is entitled to two months’ notice, unless the tenant has engaged in sustained conduct that is disruptive to other residents or neighbours, illegal, destructive, negligent toward the maintenance of the property or a material breach of the implied lease conditions, or unless the landlord has sold the property or it has passed to the landlord’s estate. Commercial estates at will were split into SDCL 43-8-8.1 by the same act and remain at one month.

Regime three — a fixed term, SDCL 43-32-22. A lease is terminated by the expiration of the agreed term, by the mutual consent of the parties, or by the tenant acquiring a title superior to the landlord’s. No notice is required and none is owed. If the landlord wants to be told before a tenant leaves at the end of a fixed term, the lease has to say so.

How a 43-8-8 notice must be served. SDCL 43-8-9 requires it to be in writing and served by delivering it to the tenant, or to some person of discretion residing on the premises; or, if neither can with reasonable diligence be found, by affixing it on a conspicuous part of the premises where it may be conveniently read. SDCL 43-8-10 then adds that only after that notice has been served in the manner directed and the specified period has expired — “but not before” — may the landlord reenter or proceed to recover possession. A South Dakota notice to vacate is the document for the tenant’s side of the same event.

Holding over. SDCL 43-32-14 provides that if a lessee remains in possession after the expiration of the hiring and the lessor accepts rent, the parties are presumed to have renewed the hiring on the same terms and for the same time, not exceeding one year. South Dakota has no holdover multiplier, no double rent and no statutory holdover damages of any kind. The consequence of taking money after expiry is renewal, not a penalty on the tenant — so a South Dakota landlord who intends to recover possession rather than renew should not accept the payment.

One more provision worth knowing sits at SDCL 43-32-23: if a lease is terminable at the pleasure of one of the parties, it is terminated by notice to the other of that party’s death or incapacity to contract; “in other cases it is not terminated by such death or incapacity.” A fixed-term South Dakota lease therefore survives the death of a party and binds the estate.

Through SDCL 43-32-13 — thirty days’ written notice in a month-to-month tenancy, and the tenant then gets fifteen days to walk. The section is titled Modification of lease rather than anything to do with rent, and it does three separate things.

First, “in all leases of lands or tenements or of any interest therein from month to month the landlord may, upon giving notice in writing at least thirty days before the expiration of the month, modify the terms of the lease to take effect at the expiration of the month.” Rent is a term, so a rent increase travels on this section, but so does any other change the landlord wants.

Second, the notice is self-executing: it “shall of itself operate and be effectual to create and establish as a part of the lease the terms, rent, and conditions specified in the notice, if the tenant shall continue to hold the premises after the expiration of the month.” No counter-signature is needed and no acceptance is required. The tenant’s act of staying is what binds them. A South Dakota rent increase notice is doing statutory work, not merely giving warning.

Third — and this is missed by all but one of the ranking pages — the tenant gets an answer: “The tenant may terminate his lease effective the first day of the next month by providing notice of termination to the landlord within fifteen days of receipt by the tenant of the notice of modification.” So a South Dakota rent increase opens a fifteen-day window in which the tenant can exit on the first of the next month rather than accept the new rent. A landlord raising rent should plan for it; a tenant who wants it must move quickly, because the fifteen days runs from receipt of the notice, not from the increase taking effect.

There is no statutory notice period for changing the rent during a fixed term, for the simple reason that a fixed-term rent cannot be changed unilaterally at all. And there is no percentage limit on any South Dakota rent increase, because there is no rent control to impose one.

No cap, no grace period and no rent control — and no lawful local rent control either. These are negative findings established by reading chapter 43-32 in full rather than by inference.

South Dakota fixes no maximum late fee, no percentage, no minimum number of days late and no grace period. SDCL 54-3-1.1 reinforces the point from the general law: unless a maximum rate or charge is specifically established elsewhere in the code, there is no maximum rate or charge and no usury restriction where the parties set it by written agreement. Both the amount and any grace period therefore come from the lease and from the general law of contract. Two ranking pages cite SDCL 43-32-12 as the authority for the late-fee and grace-period position; that section is Time for payment of rent and supplies a default payment schedule “when there is no contract or usage to the contrary” — yearly for agricultural and wildland, monthly at the end of each month for lodgings, quarterly for other rents. It says nothing about late fees at all, though it is a good reason to state the due day expressly.

Rent control is preempted. SDCL 6-1-13 provides that “no local governmental unit may enact, maintain, or enforce any ordinance, resolution, or other enactment that would have the effect of controlling the amount of rent charged for leasing private residential property,” preserving only a local government’s right to manage and control residential property in which it holds a property interest. There is therefore no municipal rent rule anywhere in South Dakota to check. The deepest ranking page nonetheless tells readers that “for manufactured homes specifically, any increase beyond the average rate of inflation requires justification under the Rent Justification process established by state law.” No such process exists in South Dakota. The official SDCL Title 43 chapter index confirms that the state has no manufactured-home-park tenancy chapter at all — chapter 32 is the only leasing chapter in the title.

The one charge South Dakota does regulate is the dishonoured check, and it is conditional. SDCL 57A-3-421 applies to “a merchant or place of business,” and only where that merchant conspicuously posts a notice on its premises, or regularly extends credit and prints a conspicuous notice on its customer statements, stating that a fee will be assessed against returned checks. Where the condition is met, the issuer of a check dishonoured because the account is closed, has insufficient funds, or the drawer lacks sufficient credit is liable for all reasonable costs and expenses of collection — and those costs “are reasonable if they do not exceed sixty dollars plus any applicable sales tax,” a figure raised by chapter 199 of the 2024 Session Laws. Two cautions. Whether a residential landlord is a “merchant or place of business” within the section is not answered by the section’s own text. And the posting requirement is a real condition: a clause in the lease alone does not satisfy a statute that asks for a notice posted on the premises or printed on customer statements. Our South Dakota late rent notice is drafted around what the lease can actually enforce.

There is no statutory notice to quit any more. This is the second big correction on this page, and only two of the twelve ranking pages have caught it.

SDCL 21-16-2 was the section that required a written notice to quit before a forcible entry and detainer action. Section 1 of 2024 Senate Bill 90 — chapter 75 of the 2024 Session Laws, signed by the Governor on 26 March 2024 and effective 1 July 2024 — provides simply: “That § 21-16-2 be REPEALED.” The section number still resolves on the Legislature’s own site, and the whole of its text now reads “Repealed.” Four ranking pages still describe a three-day notice to quit as current South Dakota law and two of them cite that repealed section by number.

What replaced it is nothing. Once a ground under SDCL 21-16-1 exists, the action may be commenced. The two grounds that matter to a residential lease are subdivision (4) — a lessee in person or by subtenants “holds over after the termination of his lease or expiration of his term, or fails to pay his rent for three days after the same shall be due” — and subdivision (7), where a lessee “commits waste upon the leased premises, or does or fails to perform any act which, under the terms of the lease, operates to terminate the same.” Note what the three days in subdivision (4) is: it is the point at which the ground arises, not a notice period. And note that subdivision (7) makes the lease’s own covenants procedurally load-bearing, because it is the lease that defines what conduct terminates the tenancy and therefore supports an action.

Two qualifications survive the repeal and are frequently lost. First, where the tenancy is a residential estate at will, SDCL 43-8-8 still requires its fifteen days — or two months for a military household — and SDCL 43-8-10 says the landlord may not proceed to recover possession before that period has expired. The repeal of 21-16-2 did not touch chapter 43-8. Second, where the lease itself requires a notice, the lease is enforceable according to its terms. That is why the builder above offers a contractual notice election, and why it labels the resulting clause expressly as a contractual undertaking rather than a statutory one: a landlord who copies a pre-2024 template into a 2026 lease has created a notice obligation by contract and will be held to it, which is a perfectly reasonable choice as long as it is a deliberate one. Our South Dakota notice to cure or quit and South Dakota three-day notice to pay rent or quit remain useful documents for exactly that reason — and for creating a paper record before a filing — but they are now serving a contract, not a statute.

Service is unusually demanding. SDCL 21-16-6 requires the complaint to be in writing and verified by the plaintiff or the plaintiff’s agent, or signed by the plaintiff’s attorney, and served with a summons. A sheriff, a person legally authorised to effect service under SDCL 15-6-4(c), or a constable of the county “shall attempt to serve a lessee, subtenant, or party in possession with a minimum of two service attempts. Each attempt shall be at least one week apart and both attempts shall be within thirty days.” On the second attempt the summons may be posted in a conspicuous place on the property and delivered to a person there residing if one can be found, and sent by first class mail to the tenant at the property. Under SDCL 21-16-6.1, on the same day as the first attempted service the plaintiff may also cause the summons to be published once in a legal newspaper in the county or an adjacent one.

Then the hearing. SDCL 21-16-7, as amended by the same 2024 act, gives the defendant five days from service to appear and plead, or thirty days after publication of service, “whichever occurs sooner.” No adjournment or continuance may be granted for more than fourteen days unless the defendant applying for it gives an undertaking with good and sufficient surety, approved by the court, conditioned for the payment of the rent that may accrue together with costs. Under SDCL 21-16-8 the action may be brought on for trial on two days’ notice after issue is joined. On a finding for the plaintiff, SDCL 21-16-10 gives judgment for delivery of possession, for rents and profits or damages where claimed in the complaint, and for costs. Under SDCL 21-16-12, “no execution for possession can be served except in the daytime.”

And since 1 July 2026, answering costs less. SDCL 16-2-58.2, as amended by 2026 House Bill 1014, now provides that the twenty-five dollar commission on equal access to our courts surcharge normally collected on an answer or initial responsive pleading “may not be collected in any civil action or proceeding… for forcible entry and detainer.” It is a small sum but a real barrier removed, and it is on none of the ranking pages.

Exactly two, and one of them is federal. That is the whole list, and it was established by reading all forty sections of chapter 43-32 rather than by inferring from what other states require.

1. Prior manufacturing of methamphetamines — SDCL 43-32-30. “In any hiring of a residential premises, any lessor who has actual knowledge of the existence of any prior manufacturing of methamphetamines on the premises shall disclose that information to any lessee or any person who may become a lessee. If the residential premises consists of two or more housing units, the disclosure requirements provided by this section only apply to the unit where there is knowledge of the existence of any prior manufacturing of methamphetamines.” Three features are worth pulling out. The trigger is actual knowledge, so the section imposes no duty to investigate. The duty runs to prospective tenants as well as signed ones, so it bites at the viewing stage rather than at signature. And in a building of two or more units it is unit-specific, which means a landlord with knowledge about one apartment does not owe the disclosure to the tenant of another.

2. Federal lead-based paint — 42 U.S.C. 4852d and 40 C.F.R. part 745. Required for target housing built before 1978, wherever it is. The lessor must disclose known lead-based paint and lead-based paint hazards, provide available records and reports, give the EPA pamphlet, and attach the prescribed disclosure and acknowledgment language to the lease. This is federal law, not South Dakota law, and our South Dakota lead-based paint disclosure carries the required wording.

What South Dakota does not require. There is no state mold disclosure, no radon disclosure, no flood or flood-zone disclosure, no bed bug history disclosure, no asbestos disclosure, no utility-apportionment statement, no sex offender registry notice, no smoke or carbon monoxide detector acknowledgment, no pending-demolition notice, no deposit receipt, no bank account identification and — unusually for a state of its size — no landlord or agent identification disclosure at all. That last absence is why the builder above insists on a real service address in the lease itself: nothing else supplies one.

Two ranking pages add to the list in ways worth naming. One includes a “Real Estate Relationships Disclosure” among the disclosures a South Dakota landlord must make. That is a duty of a licensed real estate broker or salesperson about their own agency relationship; it binds a licensee, not a landlord letting their own property, and it is the classic “right document, wrong body of law” error. Another asserts that South Dakota mandates disclosure of “the identity of all parties involved in the lease” and that “contact information for the landlord or property manager must be provided.” No South Dakota section requires either. Separately, South Dakota’s Seller’s Property Condition Disclosure Statement — which a 2025 act amended to add questions about historic designation — governs a sale and speaks throughout of a seller and a buyer. It imposes nothing whatever on a lessor.

South Dakota has no single prohibited-provisions section of the kind uniform-act states carry. What it has instead is a small set of scattered rules, and one of them is very specific.

The clause South Dakota expressly forbids — SDCL 43-32-18.1. “A lease governing residential property may not include any term that authorizes the eviction of a tenant who calls or otherwise seeks assistance from law enforcement or other emergency responders because of an alleged incident of domestic abuse, unlawful sexual behavior, or stalking.” The section adds a second, broader sentence: “Nothing in this chapter authorizes the eviction of a tenant solely because the tenant or a member of the tenant’s household is the victim of alleged domestic abuse, unlawful sexual behavior, or stalking.” It was added by chapter 190 of the 2020 Session Laws. Not one of the twelve ranking pages mentions it. Its practical reach is wider than it first appears, because it catches the “crime-free,” “nuisance” and “excessive call” clauses that circulate in national templates and that would penalise a tenant for calling for help.

The duty that cannot be waived — SDCL 43-32-8. “The parties to a lease or hiring of residential premises may not waive or modify the requirements imposed by this section.” Any as-is clause, any clause shifting general repair responsibility to the tenant, and any clause disclaiming fitness for human habitation is void to that extent. The single permitted variation is an agreement that the lessee performs specified repairs or maintenance in lieu of rent.

The deposit ceiling — SDCL 43-32-6.1. Because the section deems any performance-securing money to be a security deposit and forbids a lessor to “demand or receive” more than one month’s rent however denominated, a clause purporting to create a second, additional, non-refundable deposit does not survive contact with the statute. The money is a security deposit regardless of the label.

The fee clause — SDCL 15-17-39. Dealt with in the next section, but it belongs on this list: a provision for attorneys’ fees on default of payment, contained in an evidence of debt, is against public policy and void except as authorized by specific statute.

Excessive terms — SDCL 43-32-2. A lease of agricultural land reserving rent for more than twenty years, or of a municipal lot for more than ninety-nine, is not valid.

What South Dakota conspicuously does not attach is a bounty. Unlike Alabama, Alaska or Arizona, there is no “actual damages plus a month’s rent” remedy for using a prohibited clause. A void clause in South Dakota is simply unenforceable. The real financial exposure sits elsewhere — in the deposit forfeiture under 43-32-24 and in the two months’ rent under 43-32-6 — and a landlord budgeting risk should look there rather than at the prohibited-provisions question.

It should not try, and this form deliberately offers no such option. South Dakota answers the attorney-fee question in its costs chapter rather than in its landlord-tenant chapter, and the answer is unlike any other state in this series.

The general rule — SDCL 15-17-38. “The compensation of attorneys and counselors at law for services rendered in civil and criminal actions and special proceedings is left to the agreement, express or implied, of the parties. However, attorneys’ fees may be taxed as disbursements if allowed by specific statute.” The section then lists the case types in which a court may award fees in the interests of justice — divorce, annulment, paternity, custody, visitation, separate maintenance, support, alimony, trusts, probate and guardianship — plus mortgage foreclosures. A residential tenancy is not among them. Fee-shifting in a South Dakota landlord-tenant matter must therefore come from a specific statute, and the first sentence, which is about how attorneys are paid by their own clients, does not supply one.

The public-policy bar — SDCL 15-17-39. “Any provision contained in any note, bond, mortgage, or other evidence of debt that provides for payment of attorneys’ fees in case of default of payment or foreclosure is against public policy and void, except as authorized by specific statute.” A lease that makes the tenant liable for the landlord’s fees on a rent default is precisely a provision for fees on default of payment; whether it sits in an “evidence of debt” is a question of construction the section does not resolve, but the direction of travel is unmistakable.

The two specific statutes that do allow fees here. SDCL 21-16-11: “In any case of forcible entry and detainer, or detainer only, the court may tax as a part of the costs in the case, to the prevailing party, reasonable attorney fees, whether a trial is had or not, if prevailing party is represented by a licensed attorney.” And SDCL 43-32-28: on a retaliation claim “the court may award the lessee reasonable and customary attorney’s fees,” where “a lessee seeking attorney’s fees shall provide the court with counsel’s verified itemized statement of costs incurred and legal services rendered.”

Put those together and the position is clear. Fees exist in a South Dakota tenancy dispute, but they come from the statute and the court’s discretion, not from the lease. In the very action a landlord would bring — a forcible entry and detainer — the court already has the power to tax fees to whichever side prevails, so a lease clause adds nothing the court does not already have, while exposing the landlord to an argument that the clause is void. In the retaliation action the tenant might bring, the entitlement runs one way to the tenant and no lease clause can reverse it. That is why this generator emits no fee-shifting clause and the form carries no fee checkbox. Landlords used to seeing one on a national template should understand its absence here as a South Dakota-specific decision rather than an omission.

Retaliation — SDCL 43-32-27 — three protected acts, three retaliatory acts, and a defence the rankers invert. A cause of action may arise in favour of a lessee against a lessor of residential property, including a manufactured or mobile home community owner, where the lessor does one of three things: increases rents above fair market value; decreases electric, gas, water or sewer services; or gives the lessee notice to vacate when such notice is not based upon a breach of the terms of the lease. Each must follow one of three “special events”: the lessor has received written notice from the lessee or a governmental agency that the lessee complained to a governmental agency charged with enforcement of a building or housing code violation applicable to the premises and materially affecting health and safety, and the complaint is determined to be reported in good faith; the lessee has given the lessor written notice of a condition requiring repair under SDCL 43-32-9; or the lessee has organized or become a member of a tenant’s union or organization.

Two limits sit on the face of the section and both are misreported. It is a defence to the cause of action “that the notice to vacate the premises was given by the lessor more than one hundred eighty days after the occurrence of a special event.” That is a shield for the landlord where enough time has passed — not, as the deepest ranking page has it, a window in which a tenant “may challenge it legally within 180 days of the increase.” And “the failure of the lessor to renew any written lease prior to or upon its expiration is not retaliation,” which resolves the most common South Dakota tenant question in the landlord’s favour. Note also what the section does not contain: South Dakota raises no presumption of retaliation and shifts no burden of proof, unlike several neighbouring states.

Retaliation remedies — SDCL 43-32-28 and 43-32-29. A lessee wronged under 43-32-27 gets the remedies in SDCL 43-32-6, which means injunctive relief, recovery of possession by suit, or termination — and in any case two months’ rent plus the return of advance rent and deposit. The court may award the lessee reasonable and customary attorney’s fees on production of a verified itemized statement. SDCL 43-32-29 preserves all other rights and remedies under any other provision of law except as modified by those two sections.

Fair housing — SDCL 20-13-20 — and South Dakota does have a state statute. The deepest ranking page states in terms that “South Dakota does not have specific state statutes addressing housing discrimination” and “is bound by the federal Fair Housing Act” — while citing SDCL 20-13-20 twice elsewhere on the same page. The Human Relations Act makes it an unfair or discriminatory practice for any owner of rights to housing or real property, or any person acting for an owner with or without compensation, to refuse to rent, lease, assign, sublease or otherwise transfer any real property or housing accommodation; to discriminate in the terms, conditions or privileges of the rental; or to advertise or indicate that a rental by persons of a class is unwelcome, objectionable, not acceptable or not solicited — because of race, color, creed, religion, sex, ancestry, disability, familial status or national origin. Two of those, creed and ancestry, go beyond the federal classes.

Subdivision (4) adds a disability provision worth knowing on both sides: it is discriminatory “to refuse to permit, at the expense of the disabled person, reasonable modifications of existing property that may be necessary to afford full enjoyment of property,” and “the landlord may, where it is reasonable to do so, condition permission for a modification on the renter’s agreeing to restore the premises to the condition that existed prior to the modification, reasonable wear and tear excepted.”

There is a real exemption. Subdivisions (1), (2) and (4) “do not apply to rooms or units in dwellings that contain living quarters for no more than two families living independently of each other, if the owner maintains and occupies one of the living quarters as the owner’s residence” — the owner-occupied duplex carve-out. Familial status is defined in SDCL 20-13-20.1 and the elderly-housing exemptions are in SDCL 20-13-20.2. And note what South Dakota does not protect: source of income, sexual orientation, gender identity and military status are absent, the last of these because 2024 Senate Bill 30, which would have added it, was withdrawn by its prime sponsor. Our South Dakota tenant screening laws guide covers what may lawfully be considered at the application stage.

An early termination right with no penalty, reaching stalking as well as abuse, and reaching household members as well as the tenant. SDCL 43-32-19.1 was added by chapter 190 of the 2020 Session Laws alongside the prohibited-clause section, and it is more detailed than most equivalents.

If a tenant or a member of the tenant’s household is the victim of alleged domestic abuse, unlawful sexual behavior, or stalking, the tenant may terminate the lease and vacate the rental unit without penalty for early termination on or before a specified date, provided two things are done.

First, the tenant must notify the landlord in writing that the termination is due to the tenant’s fear of imminent danger or injury to the tenant or to a member of the tenant’s household. Second, the tenant must attach to that notice one of three documents: a police report regarding an alleged incident, signed during the thirty-day period immediately preceding the date of the notice; a protection order issued during that same thirty-day period in response to an alleged incident; or documentation signed by a licensed health care provider indicating that during that thirty-day period the provider examined the tenant or a household member, that the examination was within the provider’s scope of practice, and that as a result the provider has reasonable cause to believe the person was a victim.

Note the direction the thirty days runs. It is measured backwards from the date of the notice, not forwards from the incident. A tenant relying on an older police report needs a fresher document, and a tenant with a recent incident should give notice promptly rather than wait.

The financial effect is stated precisely: “A tenant who provides a notice of termination in accordance with this section is not liable to pay any otherwise applicable early termination fee or the rent applicable to the month following that in which the tenant vacates.” So the tenant pays through the month of departure and no further, and any early-termination fee in the lease falls away.

Two companion sections complete the picture. SDCL 43-32-19(3) makes meeting 43-32-19.1 a freestanding ground on which a tenant may terminate before the end of the term. And SDCL 43-32-19.2 provides that where a tenant terminating under 43-32-19.1 gives the landlord a forwarding address or other contact information, “the landlord may not disclose that information to any person except with the consent of the tenant or as required by law.” That interacts directly with the deposit, because SDCL 43-32-24 makes receipt of the tenant’s mailing address the very event that starts the twenty-one-day clock — so the same address must be used to return the money and protected from everyone else. Finally, SDCL 43-32-18.1 backs the whole scheme by voiding any lease term that would authorise eviction for calling for help.

South Dakota gives landlords a documentation right that most states do not — and, as of 2026, it carries two different definitions of the same phrase.

The definition that governs a tenancy is deliberately broad. SDCL 43-32-33 provides that for the purposes of sections 43-32-34 to 43-32-36, “service animal” refers to “any animal that serves a role for an individual with a disability as an emotional support animal, any therapy animal, or any assistance animal,” and “disability” is “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities of a person.” Emotional support animals are inside that definition by name.

The landlord may ask for documentation — with a limit. Under SDCL 43-32-34 a landlord “may require reliable supporting documentation be provided by a tenant of a rental dwelling unit, if the tenant asserts a disability requiring under any provision of law that a service animal or assistance animal be allowed as an accommodation.” But the landlord may not require supporting documentation where the tenant’s disability, or the need for the animal that arises from that disability, is readily apparent or already known to the landlord.

What the documentation must contain — SDCL 43-32-35. It “shall confirm the tenant’s disability and the relationship between the tenant’s disability and the need for the requested accommodation,” and it “shall originate from a licensed health care provider who does not operate in this state solely to provide certification for service or assistance animals.” That last clause is aimed squarely at online certificate mills, and it is the practical test a landlord applies.

And there is a penalty for fraud — SDCL 43-32-36. “If a person is found to have knowingly made a false claim of having a disability that requires the use of a service animal or assistance animal or of knowingly providing fraudulent supporting documentation in connection with such a claim, a lessor may evict a lessee and the lessor is entitled to a damage fee, not to exceed one thousand dollars.”

The 2026 wrinkle no template carries. Two acts of the 2026 session, both signed on 9 March 2026 and effective 1 July 2026, introduced a much narrower definition of “service animal” into South Dakota law. Senate Bill 81 amended SDCL 40-1-38, the offence of maliciously injuring, harassing or interfering with a service animal; Senate Bill 82 created a new offence in SDCL chapter 22-35 of intentionally misrepresenting an animal as a service animal in a place of public accommodation. Both define a service animal as “a dog that is trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability, as set forth in 28 C.F.R. § 36.104,” adding that “the crime deterrent effects of a dog’s presence and the provision of emotional support, well-being, comfort, or companionship do not constitute work or tasks.”

Neither act amended chapter 43-32. So South Dakota now has a broad, all-animals, emotional-support-inclusive definition governing what a landlord may ask a tenant for, and a narrow, dog-only definition governing two criminal provisions — one of which is framed around a place of public accommodation rather than a rented dwelling. A landlord who reads the 2026 headlines and concludes that emotional support animals no longer qualify in a rental has read the wrong statute. If this matters to your situation, our South Dakota pet and assistance animal laws guide goes further, and note that 2026 House Bill 1231, which would have amended the documentation sections directly, was tabled in committee and is not law.

Two rules, split at five hundred dollars of total reasonable value — and no notice-and-reclaim procedure at all.

Below the line — SDCL 43-32-25. “The property of a lessee, the total reasonable value of which does not exceed five hundred dollars, left on leased residential premises by the lessee for ten days after the lessee has quit the premises, is presumed to have been abandoned by the tenant and the lessor of the residential premises may dispose of the abandoned property.” The trigger is the tenant having quit the premises, and the presumption arrives on day ten.

Above the line — SDCL 43-32-26. “The property of a lessee, of a total reasonable value exceeding five hundred dollars, left on leased residential premises by the lessee after the lessee has quit the premises, shall be stored by the lessor. The lessor shall have a lien on the property to the extent of the costs of handling and storing the property. After storing the property for thirty days or more the lessor may treat the property as abandoned and dispose of it.” Storage is a positive duty, not an option, and the lien for handling and storage costs is the landlord’s protection for performing it.

What South Dakota does not provide is any of the machinery other states attach: there is no required notice to the tenant, no reclaim window, no duty to advertise a sale, no duty to sell rather than discard, and no duty to account to the tenant for proceeds. The valuation is left to “total reasonable value,” which the landlord judges at their own risk — misjudging a five-hundred-dollar threshold downwards and discarding goods on day ten converts a lawful disposal into a conversion claim. A dated inventory and photographs of what was left are the only practical protection, and they are worth making before anything is moved.

No to both. South Dakota requires neither subscribing witnesses nor notarization for a residential lease, and no section of chapter 43-32 imposes any execution formality beyond a signature.

What it does require is a writing for longer terms, and the sections approach it from two directions. SDCL 43-32-5: “No agreement for the leasing of real property or an interest therein for a longer period than one year is valid unless the same, or some note or memorandum thereof, be in writing, signed by the lessor or his agent thereunto authorized in writing.” SDCL 53-8-2(3), the general statute of frauds, makes unenforceable by action “an agreement for sale of real estate or an interest therein, or lease of the same, for a period longer than one year” unless in writing “subscribed by the party to be charged or his agent, as authorized in writing.” The two name different signatories, which is a good argument for having both parties sign every time and for putting even a short tenancy in writing. The deepest ranking page attributes the writing requirement to SDCL 43-32-1; that section is the definition of leasing.

One more absence is worth stating, because tenants ask about it constantly: no South Dakota statute requires the landlord to give the tenant a copy of the signed lease. That is why the generated lease says the landlord shall deliver one. It costs nothing to promise and it removes an argument later.

We rendered and read all twelve pages ranking for this query on 6 August 2026, then checked every statutory claim against the South Dakota Legislature’s own published text. The results were poor enough to be worth setting out, because if you have researched a South Dakota lease online you have probably met several of these.

The pattern is worth naming, because it is the reason this page exists. These are not disagreements about interpretation. They are stale figures, transposed section numbers, duties imported from neighbouring states, and in two cases a citation to a statute that has been repealed or lives in the wrong title entirely. Where a competitor cites a section, we opened it and read its own catchline before deciding whether the claim survived.

Three things on this page we could not resolve from primary sources, and we would rather say so than guess.

Mitigation of damages. No section of chapter 43-32 says whether a South Dakota landlord must make reasonable efforts to re-let after a tenant leaves early. Two ranking pages give directly opposite answers and neither cites authority. The answer, if there is one, is in South Dakota contract case law rather than in the Codified Laws, and it is outside what this page verifies. If early termination is live for you, this is a question for a South Dakota attorney.

Whether a lease is an “evidence of debt.” SDCL 15-17-39 voids a fee-on-default provision contained in “any note, bond, mortgage, or other evidence of debt.” Whether a residential lease falls within that phrase — so that a fee clause in it is void rather than merely ineffective for want of a specific statute — is a construction question the section itself does not answer. We take the conservative route, which is correct on either reading: no fee field, no fee clause.

What a South Dakota statute used to say. South Dakota enrolled acts restate the entire amended section and carry no strike-through or other amendment markup. That means an enrolled act proves what a section says now and never what it said before. Wherever this page describes a change, the current figure comes from the codified section and the enrolled act, both read directly; the claim that it is a change, and any previous figure, comes from a separate source and is attributed where it appears — the Legislative Research Council’s Title Summaries memorandum for the twenty-one-day deposit return, and the bill’s own title for the fifteen-day estate-at-will notice.

The implied warranty of habitability. SDCL 43-32-8 sets out express, non-waivable duties, and SDCL 43-32-9 supplies the remedies. Whether South Dakota case law adds anything to those express duties is not something a statutory reading can establish, so this page states the statute and stops there.

One further honest limit about the research itself. The 2025 and 2026 sessions were checked against the Legislative Research Council’s own per-title memoranda, which state title by title every act codified in each title and say expressly where none was — a strong source, but a summary document rather than a machine-readable table. The 2024 session has no such memorandum, so the 2024 sweep rests on the codified source lines of every section on this page plus a title scan of all five hundred and sixty bills of that session. An act reaching residential tenancy through a section outside chapters 43-32, 21-16 and 43-8 in 2024 would not have been caught by that method.

South Dakota gives a landlord an unusually short leash on the deposit and an unusually short route to court. Miss the twenty-one days and you forfeit the right to withhold anything at all, however much damage there was. Shut off a utility to force a move-out and you owe two months’ rent plus the whole deposit back. But once a ground exists, you can file a forcible entry and detainer without any statutory notice, and the defendant has five days to answer. That combination rewards choosing well at the front end far more than it rewards drafting cleverly at the back end.

Verified income, a clean payment history and no prior eviction filings remain the strongest predictors of a quiet tenancy anywhere, and in a state with no deposit interest, no escrow and a two-hundred-dollar ceiling on bad-faith damages, the deposit is a thin cushion. Our tenant screening report covers credit, eviction filings, criminal background and employment verification, and our South Dakota tenant screening laws guide covers what you may lawfully consider — including the fact that South Dakota sets no cap on an application fee, which puts the discipline on you rather than on a statute. Screen first, then paper the tenancy with this lease.

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