Landlord Atlas

What must a South Dakota landlord disclose to a tenant, and what must the lease say?

Verified September 13, 2026 All South Dakota topics →

South Dakota asks a residential landlord for one disclosure and nothing else: a landlord who actually knows that methamphetamines were previously manufactured on the premises must tell any tenant and any prospective tenant, and in a building of two or more units the duty covers only the unit the landlord knows about.

Cited to SDCL ch. 43-32 (§§ 43-32-5, -6, -6.1, -8, -9, -13, -18.1, -19.1, -19.2, -24, -24.1, -27, -28, -29, -30, -31, -32, -37) § 43-32-30; § 43-32-18.1; § 43-32-8 and 14 more cited sources · Verified September 13, 2026

No form, no wording, no writing and no deadline is prescribed, and the section states no penalty for staying silent. Everything else is absent. No statute requires a written lease, a copy of one, the owner's or manager's name, a tenant-rights document, a move-in condition report, a deposit notice at signing, or a flood, lead, mold, bed-bug, radon or asbestos disclosure, and the state has no clandestine drug laboratory cleanup law for the meth duty to sit beside. A lease may not include a term letting the landlord evict a tenant for calling for help about domestic abuse, unlawful sexual behavior or stalking, and the landlord's repair and habitability duties cannot be waived; general contract law voids exculpation for one's own fraud, contractual penalties and clauses cutting off resort to the courts. A one-way clause making the tenant pay the landlord's attorney fees stands, and cities may neither cap rent nor, so far as state law says, be stopped from adding disclosure rules of their own.

South Dakota lease disclosures at a glance

Which law governs South Dakota is not a uniform-act state. Chapter 43-32 of the codified laws, the lease and hiring chapter, is the residential body of law, and it governs a hiring of residential premises whether in writing or by word of mouth. It carries the habitability duties and their anti-waiver sentence, the deposit cap and return rules, the termination and retaliation sections, the entry notice, and the state's single disclosure duty, on prior methamphetamine manufacture. The statute of frauds appears twice, once in that chapter and once in the contracts title, with different signature rules. General contract law in chapter 53-9 supplies the rules that void lease clauses, since the lease chapter itself has no roster. The seller's property condition disclosure regime is in chapter 43-4 and reaches sales, options and a lease with an option to purchase, but not an ordinary lease. Real-estate licensing law in chapter 36-21A and the licensing rules supply the only prescribed wording and the only sex-offender rules in the state, and both bind licensees rather than landlords.
Who is covered Statewide, with no unit-count thresholds and no local opt-in. The lease chapter reaches every hiring of residential premises, and the one disclosure duty is scoped to the unit rather than the building: where the premises consist of two or more housing units, the duty applies only to the unit the landlord knows about. Three regimes sit at the edges and should not be blended in: a hotel, campground or recreational-vehicle park has its own ejection section within the same chapter, commercial deposits run under a separate section with different periods, and agricultural and farm leases have their own term and continuation rules. The sales-side disclosure regime, by contrast, is threshold-scoped, reaching residential property of not more than four family dwelling units contained in one structure.
Written lease, copy and signature rules

No statute requires a residential lease to be in writing beyond the statute of frauds, so an oral tenancy is lawful. No statute requires the landlord to give the tenant a copy of the lease.

No South Dakota statute requires a residential rental agreement to be in writing; the lease chapter governs a hiring of residential premises whether in writing or by word of mouth. A lease for longer than a year must be written to be valid and enforceable, and the two statutes that say so name different signatories. There is no duty to give the tenant a copy of a signed lease, no translation duty, no plain-language regime and no type-size rule for a residential lease, and no statute prescribes any clause a lease must contain. The only copy duty in South Dakota law binds a real-estate broker, who must give the client who signed an agency agreement a copy of it, and two typography rules sit nearby without reaching a dwelling lease: a licensing rule requires a broker's agency recital to be in italics or bold print, and the self-service storage chapter requires a bold-type statement in a storage rental agreement.

Statute of frauds: South Dakota states the threshold twice, at one year both times, but with different rules. In the lease chapter, no agreement for leasing real property or an interest in it for longer than a year is valid unless it, or a note or memorandum of it, is in writing signed by the lessor or the lessor's agent authorized in writing (section 43-32-5). In the contracts title, an agreement for the sale of real estate or an interest in it, or a lease of the same for longer than a year, is not enforceable by action unless the contract or a memorandum of it is in writing and subscribed by the party to be charged or an agent authorized in writing, though a court may still compel specific performance where there has been part performance (section 53-8-2). One says not valid, the other says not enforceable, and they name different signatories.

Electronic leases and signatures: South Dakota's Uniform Electronic Transactions Act is chapter 53-12. It excludes only wills and testamentary instruments, most of the commercial code and transactions of the Unified Judicial System, with no exclusion for real property or leases, so an electronic residential lease is within it: where a law requires a record to be in writing an electronic record satisfies the law, and where a law requires a signature an electronic signature satisfies it. The act applies only between parties who have each agreed to conduct transactions electronically, and whether they have agreed is decided from the context and the surrounding circumstances, including how the parties have behaved. Nothing in the lease chapter adds an electronic-notice rule or a consent form of its own.
Owner and agent identity

No.

South Dakota imposes no duty on a residential landlord to tell a tenant who owns the property, who manages it, or who may receive notices and service of process, in the lease or anywhere else. The phrase name and address does not appear in the lease chapter, there is no provision making a non-disclosing manager the landlord by operation of law, there is no posting alternative and there is no consequence section, because there is no duty. There is also no statewide or local landlord or rental-property registration to fall back on: the planning, zoning and housing title contains a single registration provision and it is about bonds, and the taxation title's licensing provisions are tax licenses and mobile-home titling, one of which taxes room rentals to transient guests. The nearest thing in state law is licensee-conditional and concerns agency rather than ownership: a licensing rule lets a residential property manager acting as an agent for an owner put an agency-relationship recital in a lease application or another document, telling the prospective tenant whom the licensee represents. It does not name the owner.
Required statements and lease text

No.

South Dakota prescribes nothing here. There is no tenant-rights statement, no summary of the lease chapter, no agency handout a landlord must give, no general lease text and no duty to tell the tenant where the law can be read, and no statute or rule directs any state agency to publish a landlord-tenant summary at all. The lease chapter mandates no lease content whatsoever. The one prescribed wording in South Dakota law that can end up in a lease application is the broker's agency recital listed above, which binds a licensee rather than a landlord. One nearby rule is named so it is not mistaken for a lease requirement: the self-service storage chapter requires a bold-type statement in a storage rental agreement about other people with an ownership interest in the stored property, and that is personal-property storage rather than a dwelling.

Listed, but not a general duty counted above:

Agency relationship recital in a lease application — words or content the lease itself must carry. A licensing rule lets a residential property manager acting as an agent for an owner include an agency relationship disclosure in an application to lease or in another document, and fixes the words: the disclosure must be in italics or bold print and must state that the named real estate licensee is representing the owner in the transaction and that all agents of the named company represent the owner in this and any other transaction. The statute behind it requires the disclosure at the first substantive contact with a person who has not entered a written agreement with a broker, and requires a signature block for the client or customer to acknowledge receipt; if the person refuses to sign, the licensee notes that on a copy and keeps it. The duty binds the licensee. A landlord who is not a licensee and uses no licensee owes none of it, so this is listed here without making South Dakota a state that prescribes lease text. The statute itself speaks of a seller or buyer; the reach to a lease comes from the rule. Neither states a penalty; a licensee risks discipline. Given before signing and at application. Typography: Italics or bold print. Threshold: Binds a real-estate licensee, and on the lease limb a residential property manager acting as an agent for an owner. (ARSD 20:69:16:01; SDCL § 36-21A-147) Not counted as a general duty.
Move-in condition report

No.

South Dakota requires no move-in condition statement, inventory, checklist or walk-through, no signature and no notice that the tenant may inspect, and there is no prior-tenant damage list. Nor does anything follow from the absence of one. The deposit section lets the landlord withhold only what is reasonably necessary to remedy the tenant's defaults in paying rent and other funds due under the agreement, and to restore the premises to their condition at the commencement of the tenancy with ordinary wear and tear excepted. That invites a comparison with how the unit started, but the right to withhold is conditioned on nothing except reasonableness: there is no record the landlord must have made, and no sanction for not having made one. The sanctions in that section are for a missing or late accounting, not a missing report, and they are on the security-deposits page.
Hazard disclosures

One in-force state hazard disclosure: methamphetamine (before signing and when the event the section names occurs). No state duty exists for lead, mold, bed bugs, radon, asbestos, or any other hazard.

Every state duty and every stated absence, hazard by hazard:

Lead (state add-on to the federal rule) — no state duty. South Dakota has no state lead law at all: no disclosure, no notification form, no registration, no certification and no inspection certificate, in the statutes or in the state's rules. The federal requirement for pre-1978 housing stands on its own, and it is carried on the site-wide federal page. The state's real-estate regulator links the federal pamphlet from its forms page as a convenience, which is not a state duty.

Mold — no state duty. No South Dakota statute or rule requires a landlord to disclose mold, and the state has no indoor mold standard either. The word in its building sense appears nowhere in the public health or environmental titles; the hits that exist are molded containers in the recycling definitions and molds and dies in a tax provision. Mold does appear as a question on the seller's property condition disclosure statement, which belongs to a sale.

Bed bugs — no state duty. South Dakota requires no bed-bug disclosure and has no bed-bug law reaching a tenancy. The term appears once in the whole body of state rules, in the lodging and food service rules, which require a lodging establishment such as a hotel, campground, bed-and-breakfast or vacation home to be built, equipped and maintained to keep out flies, roaches, rats, mice, bed bugs and other vermin. That is a construction and sanitation standard for transient lodging, not a disclosure and not a residential tenancy.

Radon — no state duty. No radon disclosure is owed to a South Dakota tenant, and the state has no radon program for dwellings. The word does not appear anywhere in the public health or environmental titles. The five places it appears in the state's rules are four provisions of the uranium-mining rules, about a groundwater analyte list and about ventilating ore-processing buildings, and one drinking-water contaminant limit. Radon is a question on the seller's property condition disclosure statement, which belongs to a sale.

Methamphetamine — in force — a state duty, before signing and when the event the section names occurs (a statute). In any hiring of residential premises, a landlord who has actual knowledge that methamphetamines were previously manufactured on the premises must disclose that to any tenant and to any person who may become a tenant. Because prospective tenants are named, it is a duty owed before signing as well as during a tenancy, and it fires whenever the landlord actually learns of it. Nothing else is prescribed: no wording, no agency form, no requirement that the disclosure be in writing at all, and no deadline. The knowledge standard is narrow in two ways worth knowing. It is actual knowledge, so nothing requires a landlord to test, investigate or check a registry, and it is knowledge of prior manufacturing rather than of contamination generally. The absence around it is part of the answer: South Dakota has no clandestine drug laboratory decontamination law, no cleanup standards, no certification and no bar on occupying a contaminated property, so there is no certificate to hand over and nothing to say about remediation. Knowledge standard: Actual knowledge of the existence of any prior manufacturing of methamphetamines on the premises. The section imposes no duty to investigate, test or certify. Threshold: Where the residential premises consist of two or more housing units, the duty applies only to the unit the landlord knows about. There is no unit-count exemption and no building-age limit. The section states no penalty for a failure.

Asbestos — no state duty. No South Dakota statute or rule requires an asbestos disclosure to a tenant. The state's asbestos chapter is an abatement training and certification program for contractors and workers, with duties about training courses and bid documents, and the matching rules are an abatement and contractor-licensing program. Neither has a tenant or lease limb. Asbestos insulation is a question on the seller's property condition disclosure statement, which belongs to a sale.

Other hazard notices (pesticide, ordnance, pest control, water) — no state duty. South Dakota requires no pesticide-application notice, no military ordnance or noise-zone notice, no pest-control-contract disclosure, no contaminated-site notice and no water-quality or utility-hazard notice to a tenant. The methamphetamine disclosure is the only hazard duty in the state.
Flood disclosure

No.

South Dakota requires no flood disclosure to a tenant, in its statutes or its rules. The flood question exists only on the sales side, as item eighteen of the seller's property condition disclosure statement, which asks whether the property is in a flood plain. That statement is owed only on a transfer, which the statute defines as a sale, an exchange, an installment sale contract, a lease with an option to purchase, another option to purchase, or a ground lease coupled with improvements, and it reaches residential property of not more than four family dwelling units contained in one structure. The form's own face says it concerns property offered for sale. An ordinary residential lease is outside it, and the state's other flood provisions are floodplain management, flood-control districts, dam safety, disaster assistance and irrigation.
Disclosures about the property's situation No statutory disclosure of this kind
What need not be disclosed None — no statute says a fact about the property need not or may not be disclosed in a rental, or bars a claim over its non-disclosure.
Utility, fee and payment disclosures South Dakota prescribes none of this. There is no shared-meter, submetering or ratio-billing disclosure, no duty to state every fee in the lease or to advertise a total price, no rent-receipt duty, no payment-method or payment-location disclosure, and no rent-concession, renter's-insurance, smoking-policy or rent-reporting disclosure; the state's public utility rules carry no landlord-to-tenant billing disclosure either. Two provisions come close and are neither of them disclosures. If the landlord willfully cuts services by interrupting electricity, gas, water or another essential service, the tenant may seek an injunction, recover possession, or end the tenancy and recover damages equal to two months' rent plus the return of any advance rent and deposit; that is a remedy for interrupting a service, not a rule about explaining how it is metered or billed. And on a month-to-month tenancy the landlord may change the terms, rent and conditions on thirty days' written notice before the end of a month, with the tenant able to end the tenancy from the first of the next month by giving notice within fifteen days of receiving it; that is on the rent-increase page. South Dakota has no statutory late-fee rule and no application or screening-fee statute; deposits are on the security-deposits page.
Lease clauses that are void or prohibited

No general list — a general rule voids clauses, and at least one specific clause is prohibited, as stated here.

South Dakota has no roster of prohibited lease provisions, but it is not silent either; the answer is built from three layers. The first is one express prohibition on a named term: a residential lease may not include a term authorizing eviction of a tenant who calls for help from law enforcement or emergency responders over alleged domestic abuse, unlawful sexual behavior or stalking, and the same section adds that nothing in the chapter authorizes evicting a tenant solely because the tenant or a household member is the victim. The second is a section-scoped anti-waiver: the habitability duties, which are duties to keep the premises and common areas in reasonable repair and fit for habitation and to keep the electrical, plumbing and heating systems in good and safe working order, may not be waived or modified, except that the parties may agree on repairs or maintenance in lieu of rent. That sentence protects that section and nothing else in the chapter. The state's highest court has read the duty it protects narrowly, as a repair duty whose remedy is the cost of repairs, and not as a duty to protect tenants from the criminal acts of others. The third layer is general contract law, which voids exculpation for one's own fraud or willful injury or for violating the law, contractual penalties, damages fixed in advance outside a narrow exception, and clauses cutting down or time-limiting a party's resort to the courts. The savings clause in the lease chapter, which preserves all other rights and remedies under other law, preserves; it prohibits nothing.

Sanction as the statute states it: The clause is void or unenforceable and nothing more. Neither the prohibition on the eviction term nor the habitability anti-waiver states any consequence for including the forbidden clause: no damages figure, no multiple of rent, no fee award, no bar on bringing an eviction and no cure window. The general contract provisions say void, unlawful or against the policy of the law and stop there.

The general provisions:

• A lease governing residential property may not include any term that authorizes evicting a tenant who calls or otherwise seeks help from law enforcement or other emergency responders because of an alleged incident of domestic abuse, unlawful sexual behavior or stalking (section 43-32-18.1).

• The parties may not waive or modify the landlord's habitability duties, though the landlord and tenant may agree that the tenant will do specified repairs or maintenance in lieu of rent (section 43-32-8).

• At general contract law, a contract that directly or indirectly exempts anyone from responsibility for their own fraud or willful injury to another's person or property, or from violation of law whether willful or negligent, is against the policy of the law (section 53-9-3).

• At general contract law, penalties imposed by contract for non-performance are void (section 53-9-4), and a clause fixing the damages for a breach in advance is void to that extent unless actual damage would be impracticable or extremely difficult to fix (section 53-9-5).

• At general contract law, a provision restricting a party from enforcing rights by the usual legal proceedings in the ordinary courts, or limiting the time to do so, is void, though agreements to arbitrate under the arbitration act are valid (section 53-9-6).
Attorney-fee clauses

No statute addresses attorney-fee clauses in residential leases as such.

A one-way clause making the tenant pay the landlord's attorney fees stands in South Dakota. No statute makes such a clause mutual, no statute awards fees to the prevailing party in a lease action, and nothing bans the clause; the only limits are the general contract rules against penalties and pre-fixed damages. The lease chapter's single fee provision runs one way to the tenant and only in one situation: where the landlord has retaliated, the tenant gets the chapter's remedies and the court may award the tenant reasonable and customary attorney's fees, on a verified itemized statement of costs and services from counsel. The award is discretionary. The one bilateral prevailing-party fee rule in this area sits in the sales-disclosure chapter and does not reach a lease.
When, how, and what happens on a failure South Dakota has one landlord disclosure to time, and almost no machinery around it. The methamphetamine disclosure is owed to any tenant and to any person who may become a tenant, so it runs before signing and during the tenancy, and it fires on the landlord's actual knowledge rather than on a date. Nothing is prescribed about how it is made: no form, no wording, no requirement that it be in writing, no deadline, no tenant signature, and no repetition at renewal or on any anniversary. It also carries no remedy. The section simply stops, and neither the chapter's savings clause, which preserves other rights and remedies without creating any, nor its service-interruption remedy, which is for shutting off utilities and for unlawful exclusion, reaches a failure to disclose. The only signature-block acknowledgment anywhere in this topic belongs to the broker's agency recital, which binds a licensee, and which the licensee must note on a retained copy if the person refuses to sign. Three other writings exist in the chapter and none is a signing-time disclosure: the written statement of the specific reason for withholding a deposit within twenty-one days, and the itemized accounting within forty-five days on request, both on the security-deposits page; the thirty-day notice modifying the terms of a month-to-month tenancy, on the rent-increase page; and the entry notice, which must give the date or dates of entry, a period during normal business hours, the purpose, and a way for the tenant to ask to reschedule, on the entry page. A ninety-day notice to vacate and remove a mobile or manufactured home where the leased land is developed for another use sits in the same chapter and belongs to the manufactured-home and termination pages.
Can cities add their own rules South Dakota says nothing either way about local lease-disclosure or lease-content ordinances. The lease chapter carries no preemption, supersession or authorization clause; the general local-government chapter carries one lease-facing preemption and it is about rent alone, providing 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, and that this does not impair a local unit's right to manage and control residential property in which it has a property interest. That reaches the amount of rent and nothing else. The municipal government title and the planning, zoning and housing title were read for preemption or authorization of lease disclosures and carry neither. A South Dakota municipality is therefore neither authorized nor forbidden to require a lease disclosure of its own. No South Dakota city carries its own lease packet.
How state law refers to the federal rules State law adds nothing to, and refers to nothing in, the federal rules, which are listed further down this page
Changes already signed into law No signed act is waiting beyond any not-yet-in-force duty already stated on this page
Leading court decisions Walther v. KPKA Meadowlands Ltd. Partnership, 1998 SD 78, 581 N.W.2d 527 (South Dakota Supreme Court; residential setting; bears on void or prohibited lease clauses): In a case about an apartment complex, the court read the statute requiring a lessor to keep the premises in good repair and safe as a repair statute and nothing more: the remedy for breaching it, in the next section, is the cost of repairs only, and the section does not create a duty on a lessor to protect tenants from the criminal acts of third persons. The decision matters here because that section is the one whose duties a lease may not waive or modify.

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, South Dakota Lease Disclosure Laws & Required Lease Terms (verified September 13, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/lease-disclosures/south-dakota/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Everything above is cited in the citations section below.

South Dakota hazard disclosures at a glance

One row below is an in-force state duty to disclose, hand over, attach or post a hazard notice as part of renting; the federal lead-paint rule applies on top for housing built before 1978. Each row's full text, trigger, threshold and remedy are in the table above.

Hazard Status When Form Prescribed document
Lead (state add-on to the federal rule) None — — —
Mold None — — —
Bed bugs None — — —
Radon None — — —
Methamphetamine In force Before signing and when the event the section names occurs Not specified —
Asbestos None — — —
Other hazard notices (pesticide, ordnance, pest control, water) None — — —

Federal rules that apply in every state

The federal layer for the lease-disclosures topic, carried once for the whole site. Every row names who it binds: most federal lease attachments bind only a landlord who takes a voucher or holds HUD-assisted or HUD-insured property, and the one rule that binds every landlord (the lead-paint disclosure rule) is a floor that state law may add to. No state record restates these rows; a state record says only where its own law references or extends them. Each row below says who it binds before it says what it requires. The full text of each row, with its citations, is on the 50-state page.

Notes and caveats

Common questions: South Dakota lease disclosures

Each answer is the verified value from the table above, restated as a direct answer. Free to quote with a link to this page.

Does South Dakota require a landlord to give the tenant a written statement of tenant rights?
No. South Dakota prescribes nothing here. There is no tenant-rights statement, no summary of the lease chapter, no agency handout a landlord must give, no general lease text and no duty to tell the tenant where the law can be read, and no statute or rule directs any state agency to publish a landlord-tenant summary at all.
Does a South Dakota landlord have to disclose the owner's name and address?
No. South Dakota imposes no duty on a residential landlord to tell a tenant who owns the property, who manages it, or who may receive notices and service of process, in the lease or anywhere else. The phrase name and address does not appear in the lease chapter, there is no provision making a non-disclosing manager the landlord by operation of law, there is no posting alternative and there is no consequence section, because there is no duty.
Is a move-in inspection checklist required in South Dakota?
No. South Dakota requires no move-in condition statement, inventory, checklist or walk-through, no signature and no notice that the tenant may inspect, and there is no prior-tenant damage list. Nor does anything follow from the absence of one.
What hazards must a South Dakota landlord disclose to a tenant?
One in-force state hazard disclosure: methamphetamine (before signing and when the event the section names occurs). No state duty exists for lead, mold, bed bugs, radon, asbestos, or any other hazard.
Does South Dakota require flood disclosure to renters?
No. South Dakota requires no flood disclosure to a tenant, in its statutes or its rules. The flood question exists only on the sales side, as item eighteen of the seller's property condition disclosure statement, which asks whether the property is in a flood plain.
Does South Dakota void or prohibit specific lease clauses?
No general list — a general rule voids clauses, and at least one specific clause is prohibited, as stated here. South Dakota has no roster of prohibited lease provisions, but it is not silent either; the answer is built from three layers.

Citations

How this record was verified: Direct reading of the South Dakota Codified Laws as the Legislature's own host serves them. The host publishes a machine currency value which on September 13, 2026 read September 3, 2026, five months after the 2026 session ended, and that was cross-checked against the text: the security-deposit section's credit line ends with the 2026 deposit act, and the enrolled act's own text matches the served section word for word. All thirty-seven live sections of chapter 43-32 were read in full, as were chapter 43-4 (the seller's property condition disclosure regime, with its scope clause and its statutory form), chapter 36-21A (real-estate licensing), chapters 53-8, 53-9 and 53-12, chapter 6-1, chapter 44-14 and the section indexes of Titles 9, 10 and 11. Title 34 (public health and safety), 100 active chapters, and Title 34A (environmental protection), 22 chapters, were read chapter by chapter in full text rather than at catchline level, with term counts enumerated. A code-wide catchline text was built from all seventy-one title indexes, and searched term by term with every hit enumerated. For the administrative rules, all 496 active articles were pulled in full text and searched the same way; the rules carry no publication banner, so currency was taken from the rules' own source lines, the latest effective date served anywhere in the code being September 8, 2026. The enactment check ran five sessions deep on the Legislature's own session-law chapter rolls, 2022 through 2026, 1,214 chapters in total with the numbering gap-checked in every session and no gaps found, and every catchline searched for this topic's subjects; the complete 666-measure 2026 bill roll was searched as well, and each candidate's disposition was read from its own action log and from the enrolled act, never from a list. Two enrolled acts were read in full. One decision was read in full in a central search run the same day. The 2026 session adjourned March 30, 2026 with no carryover. Verified September 13, 2026.

What was read to state each absence on this page: