They do if you spend enough money. I met someone who was related to an executive of Intel and they had a basement with dumb waiter and a laundry chute from the other floors.

I toured large house in santa clara that had a huge basement that was going for about 1M in 2017

Basement additions through remodeling has become much more common on the Peninsula over the past decade or two.

There are height and density limits, so among the few options is to go down.

Not a whole lot of coverage that I'm finding, though there's a brief mention in this Palo Alto Weekly article (2018):

<https://paloaltoonline.com/news/2018/01/12/groundwater-spurs...>

If you search "palo alto basement remodel" you'll find a heck of a lot of contractor / services pages (enough to frustrate me looking for actual news coverage or mentions).

Weird. I’ve heard this same phrase about every state I’ve lived in (always from a native) and it’s always turned out to be false.

Perhaps such a state does exist? Sibling comment seems to indicate California might not be one of them.

New Mexico doesn't have much for basements, at least in the houses that I saw down there.

Not sure about the rest of the state but definitely no basements here in South Florida. I haven’t even seen any houses w a crawl space when I was moving here. Pretty much just concrete block construction on slab. Can’t really dig far on a swamp…

I live in FL too and there are basements for sure. :) I don’t have one but I’ve seen plenty.

As for crawl spaces, they’re really common on older homes up here (central FL); I have one.

I guess you guys have some firmer land up there. Here if it isn't pure swamp, its limestone which water has no problem passing through, hence no basements in most locations.

There's practically no basements in residences in lots of Texas. In Houston a lot of the city is literally only 10-15ft above sea level, the water line is often close to the surface. Coupled with lots of rain and flooding, it's not a good idea. Then in North Texas, expansive soils are then a challenge. There's lots of shifts from drought to wet seasons that'll quickly start crushing those walls.

It's definitely possible to have basements, but it's something only the exceptionally wealthy would even bother with.

I’ve seen some in older homes and have heard “there are no basements in Texas” when I lived there. Same thing in Oklahoma, even though a house I lived in as child had one and we definitely weren’t wealthy. :)

Basements or crawl spaces? Older homes were often pier and beam construction which would have a crawl space. But most houses aren't pier and beam these days they've been pretty much all slab style since at least the 50s.

There's tons of basements in Oklahoma, you're starting to get out of the expansive soil areas I was talking about at that point. You're then also needing to worry about the frost line so your foundations would need to be deeper anyways.

Basements in both those states.

I’ve heard people in Oklahoma say that basements can’t be built because the soil has too much clay, yet I’ve seen them in older homes there.

I’m starting to think that “basements can’t be built in X state” is some kind of pervasive urban myth.

I mean, don't get me wrong, you can build a basement anywhere. Its not like the ground is truly impermeable. Its really just a question of if its worth the maintenance or not depending on the terrain around. If you're going to have your sump pump constantly run because your basement is below the water line, you're going to have a bad time. If you've got expansive soils that'll constantly be changing the direction of load on your basement walls, you're going to have a bad time. Coupled with the fact you don't need to dig that deep to get deeper than the frost line, its usually just really not worth it. So its not that they can't be built, they just can't be built economically.

Really wealthy people in Texas might have a basement; its not impossible! Some really old homes before slab-style construction might have basements as well. Or they might be living in the high deserts out in West Texas. But like easily 99.9% of homes built in the majority of Texas do not have basements. If I were to ask everyone I know if they knew anyone who had a basement at any time in any home they ever lived in, the answer would probably be "no" almost every time. Finding a home built since the 1940's in this area that's less than $10M with a basement is practically finding a unicorn. Except its an expensive unicorn needing constant maintenance.