Disclosure: If you make a purchase through the links posted below, I may receive a small compensation. Read the full disclosure.
Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.Yesterday’s horrible events in Oklahoma brought up the topic of basements. I used to think everyone has a basement, but I have since realized that this is not the case. They are super common here in the Midwest and it’s odd if you don’t have one (*). The real question around here when you are house shopping is if the basement or “finished” or not. Finished meaning drywall, flooring, some sort of ceiling (instead of just pipes), etc.
I love having a basement and don’t know what I would do without it. Not only is it a place to store my Target clearance goodies, it’s also additional living space. We had our basement finished by our builder, so it’s a livable space and looks like an extension of our house. It’s basically another floor in the house. It mainly houses kids toys these days and is the perfect spot to play in the winter. Eventually, when the boys are older, we’ll make it more of a hangout spot with a pool table, couches, etc. so they have their own space.
So I gotta know. Do you have a basement or no? And what state do you live in? Are they common around you or no?
(*) A little googling led me to why the northern states all have basements. I guess they have to dig the foundations 5 to 6 feet down – below the frost line – so they just end up making the space into a basement.
No basement here in Dallas, TX. I sure wish we did especially on days like today (thunderstorms and tornado watch). But basements and clay soil do not go together! My husband grew up in Iowa – they have a basement. I think having a basement would be awesome for additional space and somewhere to go for tornadoes.
We live in Mississippi and don’t have a basement. I don’t believe they are that common around here. In 2009, while my husband was in Iraq, my 5 month old son and I were in our home when it was destroyed by a tornado and straightline winds. I would have given anything to have had a basement then. The stories coming out of Oklahoma are heartwrenching. They make me hug my children tighter and reflect on how lucky we were all those years ago.
I live in Southern California, and I’ve never seen or heard of a basement out here. I think the added square footage would be so cool.
I wasn’t sure if I should choose no or n/a because no I don’t have one but technically it’s n/a because I’m in Florida and no one has basements here because the majority of florida is built on “swamp land” or rather we’re mostly below sea level.
I grew up in Georgia and in a house that had a basement which was always the place we flocked to during bad storms. It’s where my guinea pigs lived and my brother even had a room in the basement. When I moved to Florida at 12 I couldn’t wrap my head around the lack of a basement.
YES! I don’t know what we would do without one. When we lived in Vegas, none of the homes had basements (including ours) and it was the strangest thing ever.
@Advocarerunner: I’m in Reno and have never seen a basement here. Digging on the dessert might just be a pain huh?
I live in an apartment… so no basement for me. Living in St. Louis, I grew up thinking the same thing… all houses have basements. Apparently that isn’t the case. When I moved to Springfield, Missouri for a while and bought a house down there, it was very rare to see a basement. When I asked my realtor about it, she mentioned something about the ground not being suitable and how it was much harder and more costly to put in a basement. I can’t wait to have a basement again tho!
I’m in Kentucky. I would say it’s 50/50 here, but the house I grew up in had a basement and the house I live in now has one. It’s also an extention of our living space–but it has a guest bedroom, full bath, and two ginormouse closets for storage. It’s nice to have that space for out of town guests so they have some privacy. It’s also our sports room/man cave so that’s where we watch ballgames and movies.
Our’s is completely underground with no windows. While some prefer windows for a fire escape we love it.
Basements are super rare in South/CEntral Florida. I live in Tampa and was born and raised in Key West and have never had either. Only a few of the really old houses down this way have them. When hurricanes came they would flood, so they don’t do them. Also a lot of places just a foot or two down is solid rock so it would be a complete pain to dig out 5-6 feet down the square footage of a house.
I store my target clearance stuff under beds and at my parents house 🙂
No basement for us although I’d love to have one for all the things you described above. We are in south Texas and as far as I know, no one has them here.
Our basement is also finished, and I would say we spend about 80% of our time in the basement. I can’t imagine not having a basement, let alone a finished basement.
No basements in Texas!
I live in South Carolina, so its rarely even heard of here. We have attics….lol.
Our last two homes haven’t had basements, but the one before it did. The house I grew up in had a half-basement, which was big enough for the furnace and washer/dryer. Didn’t miss the basement in NJ as we had a huge walk-in attic, but miss the storage space in our current home. Seems that most of the houses around here don’t have basements because of the sandy SC soil.
I’m originally from Milwaukee, WI and we, along with everyone else, had a basement. I currently live in North Carolina and as a general rule, most Southern homes do not have basements due to the red clay. It makes it very difficult to support a basement. That being said, my in-laws in South Carolina have a basement. I guess the soil on their property was better.
We don’t have one, and its the WORST.
No basement for me here in Hawaii. We have a tiny attic but not the kind that people can actually walk around in; it’s more so just to put stuff in.
More tornadoes hit Texas every year than any other state, so a lot of people often wonder why we don’t all have basements. It’s generally for two reasons: we have a high water table and expansive soil. In some areas, digging down as little as 10 feet into the soil will cause you to hit water. As for the soil, with all the shifting around, it leads to cracked foundations and unlevel homes. A basement in such soil would be subject to collapse. As an alternative, people are starting to build ‘safe rooms’ which are usually giant concrete rooms that are built to withstand high winds and to be immune from puncture by flying debris.
I live just 30 miles from where the tornadoes struck down last Wednesday in Granbury and Cleburne, Texas. That particular storm was tracking toward our area and just happened to turn south again, but it got close enough that our tornado sirens were blaring.
In situations like that, we usually take to a large closet in the center of our home. We clean it out, pile in with blanket and pillows and try to ride out the storm.
My heart goes out to those who lost their homes and to those that lost their loved ones in this recent batch of tornadoes.
I live in North East Georgia & yes, I have a basement. The first house/trailer I lived in didn’t have one & when we moved into our new house -current house- when I was 10, this one had a full basement. I’ve been through tornados in both kinds of houses (with and without) and it’s far more scary in a house with no basement. Now that I’m of age for house hunting, a house without a basement is not an option. I like the extra sense of security of it & like you said, the extra space. (My husband and I actually live in the basement of my -parents- house). They are pretty common in houses around here, although there are still many that don’t and of course anyone living in trailers don’t. But there are some people who don’t have basements but have storm shelters.
I find it odd when places don’t have basements. haha. I don’t know. I like them.
No basement here! I do live in Florida though and becuase of the aquifer, we aren’t able to. If we were to dig that far down we’d hit water apparently. My dad in NH does have one though and I definitely miss it. It’d be a great place for storage.
No basement here in NC either. Most houses here don’t have them and if they do its because your house is on a drop off so you have a walk out from the basement to the lower level. My husband would have loved a basement though just wasn’t ment to be as we don’t plan on moving anytime soon.
No Basement – we live in Florida and now rethinking our “safe room” a.k.a. Laundry Room after seeing all of that damage.
I’m in Arlington, TX (near DFW) and no basement. No one that I know in the area has one.
Nope, no basement here in sunny FL (ok, not so much today). I don’t think I know of one person that has one here either.
Here is Ohio it is weird if you don’t have a basement! I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of someone not having one here actually.
We live in IN and it’s the same way here, is the basement finished or not. Now, we only had a basement in one of the three homes we lived in when I was little. Half was finished and half wasn’t. We don’t have a home now, but when we do get one, it’s something we want.
I have always had a basement in Upstate NY. Where would people keep their junk and Christmas decorations if they didn’t have a basement? :-p
I live in Texas, and I don’t know that I have ever heard of a home with a basement and I have lived here my whole 40 yrs…we need them , I am in Tornado alley.
I am in Indiana. Our old house did not have a basement. When we built our new house last year, we did a basement. We finished it, complete with a bar 🙂 At least I will have my wine in case of tornado!
Yes but they are harder to find/highly sought after here (Charlotte NC). They are pretty standard in the mountains where Josh is from. I grew up in southern Mississippi and I don’t think anyone had one. I can’t wait to finish ours, hopefully soon if we sell our old house.
I grew up in Alaska and we definitely did not have a basement growing up, only a crawl space with pipes and other scary, dark stuff. Other homes did have basements, but they aren’t really necessary for safety reasons and can be very difficult to build due to permafrost. Now that I live in Chicago in a high-rise apartment, I also don’t have a basement. I wouldn’t even know what to do if there were a tornado in this area. The hundreds of earthquake drills in Anchorage public schools did not prepare me for living in the midwest!
No basement here. I like the idea of a basement and would love one but it costs an additional $30,000+ for unfinished. I have never lived in a house with a basement so didnt see the need to spend the extra money. We usually go to a bathroom in the middle of the house during a storm. Fortunately, we have not had to do that over the last 30+ years very often.
Basement over here! 🙂 We live in Michigan, where some people have basements and some don’t. I’ve never lived in a house without one! I don’t know what we would do without it…it stores everything!
I’m in Oregon and no basement here. Many of the older homes have basements, but not many of the newer ones (think 1950s and earlier vs 1970s-today). My parents have a daylight basement, but their house is on a hill.
@mary m: I found the same thing living in Oregon. Never lived in a house with a basement but we knew a couple people with them.
No. I live in Central California and don’t know of anyone who has one around here. My Mother in law has a cellar but her house was built around the 40’s. I would love the extra space though. A lot of houses do have Family Rooms/Rec Rooms.
No basement here in SC… But growing up in the north makes me miss the basement. I remember it was the hangout with my cousins. We have attics here & they are pretty useless in my opinion!!
Growing up in Michigan, we always had basements. But once we moved to the South, we found that basements are few and far between. Where we live the soil is very sandy and cannot support a basement. My aunt in Tulsa has a “fraidy hole” that shelters her, but not everybody has them. My heart breaks for Oklahoma.
When we lived in Michigan we had an unfinished basement, but my parents houses had finished basements (we would have finished it down the line) and our newer home here in Indiana has a finished basement. Now that we have one (about 50 percent of our friends do, but pretty much our whole sub has finished basements) now I think it would be weird not to have one!
Ours is our main toy area, small hangout/movie area, very small kitchen area , seperate storage, extra room and bathroom. It isn’t huge but we do spend most of our time down here and also go down for storms to a room without windows or storage.
In Virginia It’s pretty split 50/50. Some places are two low on the water table and flood with a basement and some places are fine. Also some places the soil is too difficult to build a basement in. Each state has a different set of house building codes which tell them if they can have a basement and what sort of requirements you need based off the topography of the area. I grew up in a house that had one, and every one I knew had one, but when I purchased my own home it didn’t have a basement and none in my neighborhood do because we are in a “swampland” area.
I live in a NYC (okay, Queens) apartment building, but the building has a basement. It’s half garage and half storage units, compactor room, place for porters to collect junk.
I’ve lived on Long Island and in northern VA though and always had a basement in every house.
I live in a house in Scottsdale, Arizona. We don’t not have a basement, almost no one here (in Arizona) has a basement. For two reasons, one there are no tornados and two it would cost a ton of money to build them because the ground is so hard to dig thru. I would say maybe 1 in 10,000 houses here have a basement? Maybe even less that that. We have only lived here for about a year and a half. I was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska. Yes, we did have a basement there and I miss it so much! And it was a finished basement. We spent a lot of time down there, it was so much cooler down there in the summer! And it was a great place to store all the holiday decorations and such!
I live in Oklahoma, and oddly enough basements are not common. I think a lot of it has to do with the soil being tough to dig in, but with as many tornados that happen here, I really wish this was more of a standard. As the tornados were happening they were advising that you had to get underground or get out of the area that not even a safe room would help so it is so confusing that they are pushing those instead of figuring out the basement problem.
I live in North Georgia & basement are probably are fairly common. I think that a lot of it depends on the lot. A lot of lots (LOL) are not flat so the basement is built to compensate for the slope. With all of the storms I wish that my house had one but it does not.
Proud Oklahoman right here! As Jamie said, we don’t have basements because of the soil and with there being so much water. People are starting to want ‘safe rooms’ in their homes but those cost thousands of dollars and people just don’t have that kind of money. Some schools have them but those cost a pretty penny as well.
We’re told to go to the lowest level in a building/home and even that didn’t save some of the children at Plaza Towers. People also have storm cellars outside of their homes where they can go, but that’s mainly in the OKC area {I’m from Tulsa.} We see tornadoes here but they usually die off before they get to us. We have more hills and valleys. OKC and central Oklahoma is basically flat and that’s one of the many reasons they get the worst of things.
We sure do. We live in NY and I can’t imagine not having one.
We live in Nebraska and have a basement. I would be lost without it. It is extra living space plus a place for all my stuff. But I am am originally from Boston so we have cellars not basements and they are not finished just a place for storage and the hot water heater ect.
Basements are common here in CT and it would actually be odd if a house didn’t have one. But, I heard today that the clay soil makes basements prone to flooding and mold!
I live in PA, in a suburb of Philly. I live on a mountain, and its all rock. No basements, no in-ground pools. All the foundations had to be blasted to build here. I really wish I had a basement. They are common in this area, just not on our mountain!
I live in Utah and it seems like most of the houses have basements.
I am laughing at “I live on a boat”, I wish! We do have a basement and I am very thankful for that! It freaks me out that a lot of the newer houses being built don’t have them.
I live in Brooklyn, NY and I, too, find it “strange” when I visit a house that doesn’t have a basement! The neighborhood I live in is mostly one- and two-family residential houses and each and every one of them has a basement. I just learned that basements are a requirement here in the north due to the freeze line. My one-family home has a finished basement that looks like a nice apartment. I spend a lot of time there, as do my 3 cats, and I use it for extra storage, as well. When Superstorm Sandy hit, the first thing I thought of was how great it is that I have this great below ground area that I could shelter in should my house get ripped up by the winds. I was fortunate that I wasn?t impacted, but was grateful that I had that option.
I’m from Maine … and basements are pretty common there. So I was surprised when I moved to NC and my husband told me that they are pretty much non-existent. Something about the ground being too soft/clay-ish. I don’t know … but I have never seen a house around here that has one.
I’m in North Florida, and I’m pretty positive basements just don’t exist here. We would be below sea level, and the water table is too low. So if tornados barrel through here (which they rarely do; flooding occurs more than tornados), we’re told to hide in a low-level bathroom or get into a ditch.
We live in Colorado and while our house doesn’t have a basement, it is literally the only house I’ve ever been inside that doesn’t have one. Our house was built in the early 80s when they were slapping up suburbs right and left and trying to do it as cheaply as possible, but every style of house in the neighborhood except ours have basements. I hate not having one because we miss/ need the storage. Any house I ever buy in the future I will make sure has a basement!
I live in a townhome in the San Francisco Bay Area. Don’t know of anyone in California who has a basement, though around here there are old bomb shelters (living on the coast I guess and near the former Moffett Field military base). Not sure if basements work in earthquake country.
I live in Minnesota and have my whole life. I have lived in in 7 houses throughout my life and every house has had a basement. I don’t know very many people around the state that don’t have a basement. I understand that the soil is very damp and that there is bedrock that makes it difficult to build a basement, but maybe a storm shelter. It may cost a bit of money but in my perspective having lost a family member in a tragedy there is no amount of money that can replace that person. I would spend the money to ensure that I keep my family safe, in the long run it could be money well spent.
I miss having a basement and it’s one of the things I really look forward to having again when I move out east. I always had a basement until we moved to California, where you do NOT want a basement. Earthquakes kind of have the opposite effect of tornadoes.
Instead we’ve had to stuff things away in the garage and various closets, plus some of the extra rooms. Maybe that’s why homes here are so large?
Target clearance LOL! It’s taking over my house!!!!!
As others have noted, basements are nowhere to be found in California (a.k.a earthquake country). I’d imagine that’s worst kind of foundation for any structure here…
Hello, just wanted to mention, I enjoyed this blog post.
It was funny. Keep on posting!
Hello, Jennifer,
My husband and I reside in Oklahoma City, OK. We have been looking for a home to purchase that has a basement but we were told that the water table is too high. We are now considering relocating to Missouri or Kansas. My husband is from Illinois and has never been in a tornado as I have.
The primary reason for a basement is to use for shelter and of course a section of the basement would become “The Man Cave”. 🙂
Carolyn (Okie by birth)