What that does to a judgment for unpaid assessments

An association that sues a delinquent owner and wins holds a money judgment. Collecting it against the home is where South Dakota's homestead protection bites, and it bites hard: the homestead is absolutely exempt, and on sale the first $100,000 of proceeds is protected for a year — $170,000 where the owner is seventy or older.

In much of South Dakota, $100,000 is a meaningful share of a home's equity, and in some markets it is most of it. An association weighing whether to reduce an assessment claim to judgment is weighing it against a protected pot that grew by forty thousand dollars in July 2025.

That does not touch a properly recorded assessment lien operating against the property under the declaration, which is a different mechanism from a general money judgment. It does change what a judgment is worth. Our collections and liens page covers the distinction, which is the most consequential one in South Dakota association collections.

The other change: what survives a tax deed

Senate Bill 90 of the same session amended SDCL 10-25-12 and 10-25-39, effective July 1, 2025. The amended section:

“Any deed acquired pursuant to § 10-25-39.1 or 10-25-39.2 vests in the grantee an absolute estate in fee simple in the real property. However, the real property is subject to any claim that the state or county may have in the real property for taxes, liens, or encumbrances. The real property is also subject to any lien for past-due installments of special assessments for the financing of municipal improvements levied pursuant to chapter 9-43, including principal and interest on the installments except as provided by § 9-43-100.”²

Read the list of what survives: state and county claims for taxes, liens or encumbrances, and past-due installments of municipal special assessments under chapter 9-43.

Association assessments are not on it. A South Dakota association's lien is not a chapter 9-43 municipal special assessment, and the section does not preserve it against a tax deed.

The two mechanisms should not be confused

This is a persistent source of error, so it is worth separating plainly.

A municipal special assessment is levied by a city under chapter 9-43 to finance public improvements — paving, water main, sidewalk. It rides on the tax roll and, per SDCL 10-25-12, survives a tax deed.

An association assessment is a charge under a recorded declaration, enforceable by the association. It is a private obligation with a private remedy.

Owners receive both and frequently call both a special assessment. They behave nothing alike on a tax deed, and that difference is where an association's claim can quietly disappear. Our assessment limits page covers what governs the association side.

One thing that did not change

The tax-deed auction requirement survived an attempt to repeal it. HB 1199 of the 2025 session would have repealed SDCL 10-25-39.2, which requires a person acquiring property by tax deed to offer it at public auction within one year, with the seller compensated as on redemption and the proceeds distributed under SDCL 10-25-39. The bill was deferred to the 41st legislative day by House Judiciary, 12-1, on February 10, 2025.

That auction-and-surplus mechanism is what returns surplus equity to a former owner. Its repeal would have let a private tax-deed holder keep the whole property. It survived.

What to watch next

Nothing is pending on either section. The practical question for a South Dakota board is whether the higher homestead figure changes collection strategy — specifically, whether pursuing a personal judgment remains worth its cost where the lien against the property is the stronger remedy anyway.