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The house is set up for a level area in front of the porch. But, it is short on fill.
The house is built, so you have to adjust to it at this point. You can't go back now. The layout of the house and garage does suck, but given that layout, the finished floor, elevation, and the garage slab elevation, the location of the step down in the garage foundation is pretty good in my opinion.
I would try to push the homeowner into investing enough in fill to make the level area go across the front of the house to match up to the walk. You know the builder is not (and did not) do it. Not completing the grading is a short savings with a very big negative impact.
Then again, how do you convince someone to understand aesthetic concepts in landscaping when they could not understand how unattractive that damn garage is in front of the house?
I would bet that the project is driven by a walkout basement that became the central focus of this house and the desire to have a side entry garage became the second important thing. These are two things that will add value to a house, realtors are always telling people. People hear that and then they cling to them and compromise everything else to make those happen.
My guess based on experience:
Once they made the decision to have the walkout, they wanted the full width of the basement usable which pushed the garage over too far toward the lot line to be able to have a side entry and adequate turnaround space. Then they moved it out front instead of putting the doors on the front (could be a zoning or HOA thing, also).
Secondly, the topography is not quite right for the walkout, but they decide they can lift the floor of the house higher and make it work, but they need to match grade with the side lots and need to have a driveway that works with the grade of the street. That causes there to be a 4' difference between the garage slab and the floor of the house which also sucks.
So now they have a house that looks worse from the street than a nice pair of garage doors, a bunch of steps inside their garage, a bunch of steps in their walkway, and a pitchers nound for a front yard.
These are often accompanied by a backyard grade that is very flat to try to minimize the height of the main floor of the house, so there may be drainage problems out back.
That's my guess.
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