‘I love this town’: Sioux Falls overflows with new residents

By late last year, Ali Gabriel needed out of Minnesota.

“We got to the point where we did not want the kids to miss one more day of school,” she said. “That’s really how we felt.”

So the Twin Cities suburban mom of three, her husband, Tony, and their family headed west and joined a growing number of new Sioux Falls residents.

“I love this town,” said Gabriel, who worked as a radio personality in the Twin Cities and discovered Sioux Falls traveling with her husband, who works in insurance.

“We had made a plan in our minds that when our kids graduated high school, we were going to move to Sioux Falls. And then COVID hit, and it rocked everyone’s world. It rocked our world.”

Trying to home-school three kids, who all typically receive special education support, was next to impossible.

“We were completely stretched to the max,” she said. “So we just decided to accelerate a decision we’d already made, which made it easy.”

The Gabriel family has a lot of company in the Sioux Falls area.

This study by United Van Lines helps tell the story.

Of its moves involving South Dakota, 62 percent were people moving into the state, while 38 percent were people moving out.

That ties the state for third among the top inbound states with Arizona and just behind South Carolina and Oregon.

And while half of new residents said jobs brought them to South Dakota, about one in four cited the lifestyle or their health.

That’s up from 16 percent who gave the same reasons in 2019, and it definitely applies to the Gabriel family.

“Every day they were missing school was hurting them immensely and hurting our family,” Gabriel said.

The kids – age 14, 12 and 10 — began in the Harrisburg School District at the start of 2021.

“It was perfect timing. We closed on Jan. 4, and winter break resumed Jan. 5, so they resumed when all the other kids did,” she said. “The schools all said they had tons of new students starting, which makes me know there’s a influx of folks moving to South Dakota.”

Area real estate agents know it too.

“This is the most (relocations) we’ve ever done,” said Amy Stockberger, owner of Amy Stockberger Real Estate, who helped the Gabriels find their home.

“We’ve moved people in mainly from the West Coast – California, Las Vegas, Seattle, Oregon – and the other big main state is Minnesota. And we have even more coming in 2021.”

Many are motivated by finding a way for their kids to be in school, she said.

“They’re getting out of areas where it’s a far more locked-down environment,” Stockberger said. “A lot were doing remote (work) already, so they could stay in their jobs.”

In one recent week, Realtor Tara Allen of The Allen Edge Real Estate Team at Keller Williams Realty Sioux Falls sent out a dozen relocation packets to prospective residents.

They’ve gone to places such as Virginia, Seattle, California, Las Vegas, Minnesota and Missouri, she said.

“One of my (real estate) coaching clients in Florida said, ‘What is going on? I’m seeing people relocating to Utah or Sioux Falls. What are you doing?’ ” Allen said.

“It gets political, usually,” she acknowledged.

“And it’s more because of what’s going on where they’re at. I’d say nine times out of 10 it’s something like that, or two were Army-related relocations. I’m not hearing they’re moving for jobs, although some are retired and have retirement benefits.”

Companies have continued to relocate people during the pandemic, though.

“Relocation hasn’t slowed a lot for major employers,” said Rhiannon Israel, who owns Welcome Sioux Falls, which assists with relocations and helps newcomers integrate into the community.

“They’re still moving people. It’s not that it came to a screeching halt with COVID.”

She has seen a number of people move from California and Wisconsin, with more coming from west of South Dakota and a considerable number from bordering states.

“We have people in the Newcomers Club who have chosen to move here not because of a job but just because they wanted to move to Sioux Falls,” she said.

“We had one family (that moved from the East Coast) that moved on New Year’s and came to visit over Thanksgiving and were super excited they can live life the way they want to.”

In Gabriel’s case, remote work was an option for her husband, and she’s looking for a local radio job.

“His employer was incredibly supportive,” she said. “And it was a 7.5 percent raise because there’s no state income tax here.”

Her family is adjusting well, she said.

“One thing we sure have enjoyed is going to restaurants, which we also couldn’t do in Minnesota. We have loved going to church, which we were not going to in Minnesota. Our church had been closed since March, no kids’ programming or anything,” she said.

“And the plan the Harrisburg School District has put in place to keep kids in school is brilliant. It should be a nationwide model. They have kept their kids in school every single day.”

Mostly, though, they just have enjoyed resuming more or less normal life, she said.

“I know that sounds like it’s a really low bar, but it’s not,” she said.

“It’s crazy you can drive from a major metro to a semi-major metro 3.5 hours away and have a completely different life.”

Amanda Archer and her husband, Brent, hit the road and also ended up in Sioux Falls.

But they had a lot farther to drive.

“March 15 was my last day at work. Right after Mardi Gras,” said the former New Orleans resident, who managed a mom-and-pop restaurant.

“It was pretty rough. The whole city shut down at least a week, and everybody was doing to-go (meals), and it’s still the same. There are plenty of restaurants closing, some industries pulling out of New Orleans and going to Atlanta. I have friends in the film industry, and jobs are really scarce.”

Her husband worked for a large casino corporation “and they laid off basically everybody with his position across the company,” she said.

“So we both literally started applying for jobs all over the U.S.”

With no kids and a house they had just bought 10 months prior, “not knowing how things were going to happen, we just sold the house and did a little road trip throughout the U.S.,” she said.

For more than two weeks, they drove through the South, up to Colorado and east to Wyoming and South Dakota.

“Every state was different,” Archer said. “Nobody was doing lockdown the same way. We’d go to Deadwood, and no one was wearing masks, and in Denver it was 100 percent locked down.”

They ended up back in Louisiana, rotating between their parents’ homes, when Grand Falls Casino & Golf Resort offered Archer a job.

“That’s how we ended up in Sioux Falls,” she said. “We had never been in Sioux Falls. But I applied for a casino management job and got it. Well, I guess we’re moving to Sioux Falls.”

Her husband subsequently found a job in customer service at a Sioux Falls company. They arrived a week before Thanksgiving.

“I really like the downtown area. That’s where we had originally looked at living. I was used to living in downtown New Orleans,” she said. “Once our lease is up, we may move downtown, depending on if we decide to buy a house and stay here.”

Finding an apartment that would allow their German shepherd connected them with Lloyd Cos., where leasing agent Andy Middlen has had a front-row seat to the relocation surge since taking on his role in mid-2020.

“We’ve been very busy,” he said. “Even during April and May, we had some of our biggest months, renting sight unseen. People were looking at virtual tours.”

Since then, “we had people calling from Miami, the D.C. area. I had people call from Baltimore, Portland, just trying to get away from hot spots,” he said. “They found out we weren’t shut down and don’t have income tax, and a lot of families want to move here because our schools were open. Our three- and four-bedroom town homes went very fast.”

While some people research online and come in with a set idea of where they might like to live, Middlen said many more think the side of town is irrelevant.

“People who move here from bigger cities see they can get anywhere in 25 minutes and say: ‘I don’t care where I live. You can put me anywhere.’ They’re shocked by the traffic and cost of living,” he said.

“People moved here from Portland, (Oregon,) and he had a studio there and was paying almost $2,000 a month, and here it’s max $900. And that’s a high-end studio downtown.”

One of the most coveted places he has heard of isn’t in Sioux Falls at all, though.

“It’s Brandon. They want to be in Brandon because it’s a smaller community and they’ve looked online and Brandon has rave reviews about education, and that’s really important to them,” Middlen said. “We have three town home complexes there and all three-bedrooms are totally full. So Brandon, for sure, and the east side (of Sioux Falls). That’s been blowing up big time.”