Updated September 6, 2026. Quick answer: South Dakota’s Medicaid home equity limit for a single nursing-home applicant is $752,000 as of 2026. South Dakota’s own document states this figure directly but does not call it a ‘minimum’ or ‘maximum’; this session confirms it matches the lower end of the federal range under 42 U.S.C. Section 1396p(f), roughly $378,000 below the $1,130,000 ceiling some other states elect. Above that figure, you are not eligible for nursing-home Medicaid unless a spouse, minor child, or disabled child of any age lives in the home.
What South Dakota’s own rule says
South Dakota’s own rule spells the figure out in words rather than numerals: ‘seven hundred fifty-two thousand dollars.’ The rule’s own source history line shows a chain of amendments through ’52 SDR 125, effective July 1, 2026′; the figure this session read is the current, already-in-effect text, not a prior-year snapshot.
Get the house question looked at before it is urgent
Whether a home counts, and what happens to it afterwards, turns on facts about the household as well as on the state rule this page sets out, and an adviser can look at the property alongside the rest of the money before any of it has to be decided under time pressure.
Before you start, what actually happens. The form is run by Kapitalwise, our advisor-matching partner. Kapitalwise sends your details to advisers who pay for the introduction, so expect calls and texts. Clear Money Guide is paid when you submit the form, whether or not you ever hire anyone. This is free to you and there is no obligation to hire anyone.
The Kapitalwise form opens here. You stay on this page.
What happens when you press the button
It asks about nine questions (age, investable assets, location), then your name, email and phone number, and verifies the phone by text. Nothing loads and nothing reaches Kapitalwise until you press the button. Submitting the form does not guarantee an adviser or a match. This matching form is not tax or legal advice.
The genuine wrinkle this page discloses
T01 could not read this rule at all: sdlegislature.gov renders rule text through a client-side JavaScript application that returns only a loading shell to a plain fetch, and Cornell LII’s mirror was confirmed stale. This session found that the same site exposes its rule text through its own API endpoint (‘/api/Rules/Rule/<rule>.html?all=true’), which returns real UTF-16-encoded HTML with the full rule text; a route T01 never tried.
| Citation | South Dakota Legislature, Administrative Rule 67:46:05:15, ‘Home property exclusion’ (South Dakota Department of Social Services) |
| What it says | “If an individual’s eligibility for long-term care assistance is based on an application that was received by the department after December 31, 2023, the individual’s home property interest, up to an equity value of seven hundred fifty-two thousand dollars, is excluded from the individual’s assets if it continues to be the individual’s principal place of residence.” |
This page covers whether the home counts as a resource while you are alive and applying. What happens to the same house after death is a separate question: see the Medicaid estate recovery by state table, which gives South Dakota’s row for what the state can reach and the authority for it. And if a spouse, or a minor or disabled child, still lives in the home, the equity limit on this page does not apply at all: see what the law protects for a spouse who stays at home.
Every citation on this page was read directly from the state’s own Medicaid agency, administrative code, or official eligibility manual this session. General information, not legal or financial advice; a figure this specific can change with a budget cycle or a federal inflation adjustment, and a county or state caseworker has the final say on any individual application.