SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO)–Last year brought a record for new apartment permits in Sioux Falls; while development is slowing this year, a developer new to the city is well underway on three major new luxury apartments. 

“We set ourselves apart with the design,” Dusten Hendrickson, the founder of Mailbox Money Real Estate said.

It’s a commitment to creative architecture Sioux Fall native Dusten Hendrickson has held since founding Mailbox Money Real Estate.

“I started developing in Brookings, South Dakota, just with duplexes, and renting them to the college students,” Hendrickson said. “Now 20 years later I’m into much larger projects.”

His company’s first move to the Sioux Falls market is the Blu on Lake Lorraine, a luxury apartment that just started pre-leasing its first units.

“The Blu on Lorraine will be ready in a few months, by August it should be ready to go,” Hendrickson said.

His second project is The Velthuis apartments near 57th Street and Rolling Green Avenue, just west of Louise Avenue.

“It is a wellness design, it’s a Scandinavian interior, all white on white, the pool room we have is south facing with two story windows,” Hendrickson said. 

While The Blu and The Velthuis are as high end as they come with many unique amenities, his newest Sioux Falls development is scaled back a little just due to the current state of the economy.

“We’ve also started the Briarwood Reserves, which is a modern workforce style housing, so its a little lower grade than this, still Class A interiors without the amenities,” Hendrickson said. “In this inflationary time with construction prices rising and interest rates going up, we’d have to strip some stuff out to make these projects work.”

While some Sioux Falls developers are pulling back on starting new projects altogether, Hendrickson says his company is just getting started in their plans to help grow the city.

“We want to expand to roughly 1000 units per year, that’s our goal. We want to add a lot of housing to Sioux Falls,” Hendrickson said. “There’s a lot of people moving here every year, we’re at really low vacancy rates…we are absorbing as much as we can put online.”

Over the next year as his three new apartment developments are complete, Mailbox Money will own near 420 luxury units in Sioux Falls, with other projects also in the works in Brookings and Watertown, along with future plans to expand to more of the southeastern part of the state.