The Average House in South Dakota is 4 Decades Old
The homeownership and improvement website HouseMethod dug into census numbers and found that the average house in South Dakota is 43 years old.
Breaking down the figures even more, they found that the average age of houses in Minnehaha County, South Dakota is 39 years.
I was driving through an eastside Sioux Falls neighborhood recently. It's a part of town I'm familiar with the area. I know that most of the houses in the neighborhood were built as parts of developments in the 1970s. Meaning that most of the houses in this area south of 10th and east of Sycamore are around 50 years old.
It's not really an issue. They are good, solid American construction, there's no reason to think they won't last another 50 at least. The houses are primarily single-family, ranch-style with a main floor and a basement with some split-level houses thrown in. Some have a second floor, and some have a bigger yard, but they're all modest small houses.
But it got me thinking, are they even building new houses like this? All I see being built are McMansion wannabes, giant apartment complexes, and townhouse duplexes.
Are neighborhoods for families even being developed in the 2020s?
I'm just old enough to remember all the stories about the USA's post-war expansion in the late 1940s and 1950s. Watching newsreels of Levittown-ish suburban neighborhoods full of freshly build single-family houses.
Today the housing market seems to be leaving out folks that don't want to live in a compound outside the city or rent half a yard.
You can see this state of affairs in the numbers. The homeownership and improvement website HouseMethod dug into census numbers and found that the average house in South Dakota is 43 years old.
The average age of houses in Iowa is even older, at 50 years. In Minnesota, it's also 43, and it's 47 down south in Nebraska.
In their survey of the nation, they found the oldest average age of houses is in New York at 63, and on the other end of the spectrum, in Nevada, it's 26.
Breaking down the figures even more, they found that the average age of houses in Minnehaha County, South Dakota is 39 years. Lincoln County is a relative baby with an average of 19 years.
The oldest homes in South Dakota look to be in Clark County, in the east-central part of the state. The average age there is 75 years old.
Looking at just cities and towns, in Emery, South Dakota the average house was built in 1941. Out near the Black Hills in Summerset, the average house was built in 2006.
In Harrisburg, it's 2005, and in Tea 2002.
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