Inside ‘the most luxurious Airbnb’ in South Dakota

Here’s an email worth saving:

“It just said, ‘You guys have been voted the No. 1 place in South Dakota. Feel free to share it.’ ”

That’s how John and Kaylee Koch learned their rental home in the Black Hills had just been named the most luxurious Airbnb listing in the state by Trips to Discover, a travel website.

Sheep Hill Chalet – named for the road that leads to it, though they’re still hoping for a sheep sighting one day – sits on a 10-acre property that borders the Black Hills National Forest.

“We’re pretty happy with it,” said John Koch, who owns a Sioux Falls construction company that specializes in historic home renovations.

This home was new construction, though, built in 2018 on property between Deadwood and Lead that he’d owned since 2006.

Some of his employees moved to Lead to get it built.

“I was going mountain modern,” with the design, he said. “I went with the attitude like ‘have fun with it, don’t take it too serious and it’ll end up whatever it ends up. It’s the Black Hills.’ So it was cool.”

The three-bedroom home turned out so well “it was a little scary to even start renting it,” Koch said. “So it was a little slow go marketing it.”

They mostly rented to friends and family. And then COVID-19 hit.

“And literally it just lit up,” he said. “It books almost every single day. Wintertime, it’s every weekend and all the holidays and summer is every day. I don’t know now if that will change or not.”

It has the luxury-living angle down too.

There’s a double-sided stone fireplace.

A gourmet kitchen.

A hot tub.

“My builder-employee is literally like Bob Vila. He’s unbelievable,” Koch said.

Only downside: He liked it so well he decided to stay in the Black Hills permanently.

But that’s working out, too, because the Kochs have hired him to start on their next project: The Sheep Shack.

This smaller cabin will be 1,500 square feet “with really nice finishes, really big windows, a big chunky fireplace with two master bedrooms and two master bathrooms.”

The property is accessible on well-maintained roads but still requires four-wheel drive in the winter, but you can get a pizza delivered there. And it’s a 12-minute drive to Terry Peak or 15 minutes to Deadwood.

“And all the land around us and our property on 75 percent of the sides is national forest, Bureau of Land Management, so we’re pretty fortunate there. We really don’t have any structure in our views all the way around.”

To see the Sheep Hill Chalet on Airbnb, click here.