Never had them on 4 houses, always wanted one, and still do. I have had useable crawl space but that’s not the same.
Old house (for here, anyway) - original part built in the 1870s or maybe early 1880s. It’s kind of a partial cellar with crappily poured concrete that opens into a crawl space.
Remind me not to write the “Property Details” in the listing if I ever sell this place!
When I was little, we lived in a duplex on a slab foundation in Massachusetts. It was unpleasantly damp at times. Do not recommend.
When I’ve lived in single family houses in cold country yes. Otherwise no.
Had one on a hillside where the basement was “walkout” on the downslope side. It was about 3/4ths finished with a rec room, living room, and bedroom + bathroom that we repurposed into the home office. Which still left an embarrassingly large unfinished area for the HVAC, HWH, etc., equipment, the gym, and for storage.
Had another on flat ground where the only access to the basement was the interior staircase. It only had a couple SF of high-mounted windows on one face. Great for storage & the gym, pretty useless otherwise.
My warm weather houses have all been slab on grade. Then there’s the high rise condos, apartments, etc. Never owned or leased more than one residence at a time, but over the years it’s turned into quite a list.
Not only does our house have a basement, but there’s a fireplace down there. In addition to the one in the living room.
Full finished basement with bath and laundry/utilty room. The house is built on a hillside so that’s called a walkout basement here in SE Michigan. Its got a full size sliding door that opens to the backyard patiio while 3/4 of the basement is underground.
I grew up in the midwest and AIUI one of the tricks was to build a house with a basement but not finish the basement—framed, wired, but no drywall or flooring etc. Then, if you want, secretly finish it later because if the tax man finds out, your property insurance will go up.
My sister (in Iowa) said her walkout basement was taxed according to the square footage that was finished.
We have lived in a 120+ year old Victorian house in the Willamette Valley (Oregon) for 32 years that doesn’t even have a foundation, as such. It’s on post and beam. I hate crawling under there.
A little over a year ago we bought a little ‘retirement’ house in Central Oregon that was built into the side of a hill and has a walkout basement, but had a dirt floor. About 8’ of headroom. The first big project we did was have a concrete floor poured down there. 
I love it! No more crawling around dragging tools behind me! Everybody should have one.
We plan on selling the victorian in the next year or so and move completely over here. 
In Michigan finished basement don’t count towards the square footage. My house is listed as 1200 sq ft. But they do allow the full bath downstairs to count. My basement is like a small apartment. Bed, bath, bar, treadmill, sectional sofa and big screen TV. And its in a FEMA flood zone. Not worried about flooding, if my place floods then the million dollar plus homes downtown would flood too. They got flood gates downriver to fill the a large park with overflow.
At least in MO where I lived that’s not exactly how it worked.
Finished or not the property taxes were the same because the taxable square footage didn’t include the basement, period.
What did change was that if you had a finished basement that you never told your insurance company about then you’d have a real hard time getting them to pay to replace something that never existed after that fire or tornado or basement flood wrecked your non-existent finish job. And if the fire or flood started from part of your finish job then any/all damage throughout the house was uninsured since the source didn’t exist as far as your insurer was concerned.
You certainly could choose to run that risk, just like you could hire unlicensed contractors to do unpermitted and therefore uninsurable work. It certainly was cheaper. Just don’t get unlucky.
Used too. Many times. Now way up in the Colorado Mountains, we don’t. Way up. We have a small 10x11 front entry way addition that is on a short 3 foot concrete foundation wall. Built In ~ 1982. That caused a mess as there are springs coming up from the ground everywhere. There was 3 feet of water in it. Even at this elevation. That was a $50,000 fix (we shall see…). Replaced entire structure. Now it’s my wife’s office when she works from home. Actually makes a good spare bedroom in a pinch.
My well is 110 feet deep, but water is everywhere. It’s all Rocky Mtn ‘Dirt’ mostly rocks. We have a small steams on both side of our property. They are from springs too.
Other as it’s a walkout. As well as the main living area. One would enter the front door into garage. It’s a well organized garage but yeah so that charming entrance then leads through to mud/laundry room. 
Take stairs down to main living area. A newer addition opens up the rear of the cave to light and views.
That’s true in NJ too. Basically several tax categories. Above Ground, basement finished and basement. Our finished Rec Room can be listed as a room, but a basement bedroom would never count as a bedroom in NJ unless it had a door out or some other easy egress in case of fire.
We don’t have one and our house is along the destruction path that the Plainfield tornado took back in the 90s. All the old construction homes around here are on slabs. My wife complains but I tell her that a tornado isn’t going to come here twice. That doesn’t make her feel any better.
Basements are uncommon in the UK - I was able to find out just how uncommon:
Overall, about 340,000 (2% of all dwellings) had at least some of their rooms
in a basement (see Annex Table 1.21). The EHS only counts basements that
have a permanent staircase, a complete floor at least 1m below ground level
and natural lighting in habitable rooms
. The majority (75%) of dwellings with
basements were houses. Most of these houses with basements were owner
occupied (85%) and two thirds (67%) were built before 1919. Of the 84,000
flats with basements, 75% had all of their rooms located in the basement.
Source (PDF)
j
PS - if you’re just surveying for just US responses, you need to knock 1 off the “No” column!
Sort of.
We have a split-level house. The bottom level is about 3’ below ground.
Interesting – I didn’t realize that there were large numbers of houses around here that were on slabs. Thank you for the information!
a fellow I know volunteered with the Canadian Red Cross to provide disaster relief after Hurricane Katrina in the New Orleans area. He gave a presentation when he came back, with a power point with a lot of pix.
At one point, someone put up their hand and said, “what are all those concrete slabs in the pictures?”
He paused for a moment, then gently explained that there are no basements in houses in Louisiana. “Each of those slabs is all that is left of someone’s home.”
There was dead silence in the room.
Basements are very rare here in Tucson because of the caliche.
London probably has a higher proportion of basements than any other city in the UK.
This is partly due to the very High price and scarcity of land, and partly because London clay is easy.
A recent problem has been wealthy people extending their basements down further and out to the edge of the property. There have been some spectacular disasters.