House 1m below street level - best rebuild options?

We’re looking to buy a knockdown-rebuild house where the land slopes down 1m from street level. There's a retaining wall at the front, and the driveway is quite steep to the garage.

The house looks like this picture: https://images.landscapingnetwork.com/pictures/images/900x705Max/swimming-pool_6/front-retaining-wall-elaine-m-johnson-landscape-design_2822.jpg

The house looks and feels sunken down at the front, and we wanted to understand what options and costs are involved to work with the slope of the land and disguise the steep slope at the front.

Googling we’ve seen homes built like these, where the house is raised above the garage: https://i3.au.reastatic.net/800x600/95f5750b40d40e8b45b16b70a90df20613103f17c949530afaef4a9e11d8f84d/main.jpg

But this isn't our favourite look, and we're sure people have found other ways of working with this type of land.

Has anyone seen any creative options or can offer any advice?

Many thanks.

Garage under is the ideal way - if you must buy. I don't like the idea of being below the road level but I guess its all in the planning.

Do you have views out the back ?

BUT - you could have a garage sort of parallel to the road - if you follow me - then a deck on top - with the house off this. As I say - I don't like the look where the house is "down" so I'd be having an underneath regardless.

Water flow will be very important.

Is the back of the block at the same level as the front or does it have a slope?

Perhaps look at a split level home.




http://www.splitlevelhomes.com.au

I think it might come down to your personal preferences.. and your list of 'must haves' 'would be nice but can live without' and 'must not haves' in your street appeal wants.
-as you noted, you're not keen on having a garage under the house, which could be because you don't want to have many stairs to get to the garage?? hope im thinking right..
-you also don't want to have the house look sunken, again i agree, street appeal effects.

in terms of another creative option, maybe make a longer snaking driveway across the front of the block? that way the land tapers at a more shallow slope? - again, i would probably still consider a split level home to maximise the height placement of the facade at the front for street appeal, but then have all your true living areas down on your block.
--some things that could be nice about this... is that when a visitor comes through your front door, they could end up with quite a 'wow' factor of looking down towards your living areas (especially if you maintain higher ceilings inside)

?are you also thinking a two-storey house? - because again, you could doll up the facade of your second level to make up for the sunken house look..?

in terms of costs, it sounds like you will definitely be paying for things that you would not otherwise need to pay if you had a raised or level block. i would be seeing if you negotiate the price down in that regard to the vendor so that you have extra funds to pay for the extra site works.

you might find from our build, we had to accommodate for rocks on our block and a big 'block filling single storey house' and we also did not want to have stairs to the house (i.e. like a raised qlder style house) -> so the solution we decided on was to do a massive levelling fill of the block. (this has added a lot of cost for our block... but it was still within our projected costings for the build) this is probably because we knew all the blocks of land we were looking at in town all had their 'quibbles' and 'quirks'. this is one of the realities of buying blocks in established areas because all the 'good blocks' will have already been sold... and therefore, all the blocks still available will have a reason or two to be still on the market...

-some nice benefits of our solution it is that the house will definitely be elevated hopefully giving a nice street appeal, and given we are next to a creek, flood-protected potentially too! this was definitely on the cards for us, having been thru three floods ourselves, we were keen to avoid designing or building a home that could be flood-affected.

hope that helps!
and good luck, would love to hear what you decide!

Hi somewhere
You will need to provide more info ie, contour survey & geotech report
at this stage everyone is guessing BTW which state are you in?

First you need to examine the foundations of the house and the stability of the ground itself. Depending on that you can start making plans. An underground garage sounds like a good idea, but since you want to get rid of the slope, it's probably not a good fit for you. The natural levelling the entire place can be quite costly and it could take a lot of time, depending on the type of soil beneath the house. It will be a complex process of laying ground, waiting for it to settle, and probably laying more ground after that.