Landlord Atlas

How much notice is required to raise the rent in South Dakota?

Verified July 11, 2026 All South Dakota topics →

South Dakota landlords must give month-to-month tenants at least 30 days' written notice before the end of a monthly period to raise the rent, under an express lease-modification statute (SDCL 43-32-13) that covers 'the terms, rent, and conditions' of the lease.

The mechanics matter: the notice must be given at least 30 days before the expiration of the month and the change takes effect at the month's end — so a notice served mid-month pushes the increase to the end of the following month, not simply 30 days out. Once served, the notice automatically becomes part of the lease if the tenant stays past the month's expiration, but the tenant gets an escape hatch: within 15 days of receiving the modification notice, the tenant may terminate the lease effective the first day of the next month. There is no limit on the size or frequency of increases and no rent control anywhere in the state — a 1990 statute (SDCL 6-1-13) expressly bars every county, township, and municipality from controlling rents on private residential property. One guardrail: raising rent above fair market value within 180 days after a tenant's good-faith code complaint, repair notice, or tenant-union activity can be actionable retaliation (SDCL 43-32-27).

South Dakota rent increase notice at a glance

Notice — month-to-month 30 days
Varies by increase size Not addressed by statute
Fixed-term leases Rent is fixed by contract for the term; SDCL 43-32-13 applies only to month-to-month leases. If a tenant holds over after a fixed term expires and the landlord accepts rent, the parties are presumed to have renewed on the same terms and for the same time, not exceeding one year (SDCL 43-32-14), so a landlord who wants higher rent after a fixed term must set the new terms before accepting holdover rent.
Statewide rent control / stabilization No
Rent control details No rent control exists anywhere in South Dakota, and SDCL 6-1-13 (SL 1990, ch 51) expressly forbids it locally: 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. 'Local government unit' is defined broadly to cover any political subdivision — county, township, municipality, or other unit (SDCL 6-1-12). The only carve-out is residential property in which the local unit itself has a property interest.
Local rent control preempted Yes
Frequency limits Not addressed by statute

Notes and caveats

EXPRESS-STATUTE STATE (encode 30, not null): 43-32-13 is a true lease-MODIFICATION statute, not a termination derivation — its text expressly reaches 'the terms, rent, and conditions specified in the notice' (MA/VA/HI/ME/NH convention). Render points: (1) the notice must be WRITTEN; (2) the 30 days are anchored to the expiration of the monthly period ('at least thirty days before the expiration of the month... to take effect at the expiration of the month') — do not render as a floating 30 days from service; (3) tenant counter-right: terminate effective the first of the next month by notice within 15 days of receipt of the modification notice (added by SL 1980, ch 298); (4) service of the notice 'shall of itself operate' to bind a holdover tenant to the new rent — no fresh agreement needed. Distinguish 43-32-15, the termination statute (notice equal to one rental period, capped at one month) — that section is about ending the hiring, and is NOT the source of the rent-increase rule here. Week-to-week tenancies: 43-32-13 by its terms covers only month-to-month leases; a weekly hiring falls back on 43-32-15 termination mechanics (one-week notice) — no express rent-change notice, so describe rather than encode. Preemption is express and comprehensive (6-1-13, definition in 6-1-12); no South Dakota municipality has ever had rent control. Amendment check: 43-32-13 last amended 1980; 6-1-13 unamended since 1990; nothing on-topic in the 2025 or 2026 sessions.

Statute citations

How this record was verified: Direct read of statute text served by the official South Dakota Legislature site (sdlegislature.gov, SDLRC codified laws): the complete text of every section of SDCL chapter 43-32 (43-32-1 through 43-32-37, including all decimal sections and the repealed 43-32-7) read via the site's chapter endpoint, with every load-bearing section (43-32-6.1, 43-32-24, 43-32-13, 43-32-32, 43-32-12, 43-32-15) fetched a second, independent time via the per-section endpoint — all figures matched verbatim across reads (one month's rent cap; twenty-one days / forty-five days deposit clocks; $200 punitive ceiling; thirty-day modification notice with fifteen-day tenant termination right; twenty-four-hour written-notice entry presumption). SDCL 6-1-13 and 6-1-12 (rent-control preemption) double-read the same way. The 2026 amendment to 43-32-24 additionally pinned character-for-character from the official enrolled 2026 SB 4 (SL 2026, ch 179) and its introduced strike/underline version via the Legislature's document API; bill history from the official action log (signed by the Governor 2026-02-12; no effective-date clause, so effective 2026-07-01 under SDCL 2-14-16, read from the official site). Session sweeps run against the official bill lists: 2026 regular session (666 bills — SB 4 enacted and incorporated; HB 1231 on assistance-animal documentation tabled 2026-02-11, dead), 2025 regular session (571 bills — no landlord-tenant bills), 2025 special session (2 bills, corrections real estate only). Negative findings (no deposit interest or separate-account rule, no late-fee statute or grace period, no enumerated entry-reasons list) verified against the full chapter text in both reads. Note: sdlegislature.gov statute pages are JavaScript-rendered, but all text was read from the same official host's JSON/HTML API endpoints — no mirrors were needed or used.