Why Don't Houses in Tucson Have Basements?

It's true. You won't find many basements in Tucson houses. In fact, in my 40-plus years here (which includes many years of showing houses as a real estate agent) I have only seen one.

Why is this, you wonder?

Well I'd always heard it's because caliche makes it too difficult to dig.

Caliche (kuh-LEE-chee) is layers of
rock-like dirt; a result of soil and rocks
being cemented together by lime deposits.

1. Our desert soil (if you're not on a bed of caliche) is too loose to support a deeper underground structure.
   
   
2. It's time intensive, adding roughly one month to the home-building process. Multiply 30 days by all our tract homes and you'll see how this really adds up.
   
   
3. It's less expensive to build up into a two-story home than it is to build down into the earth.