Your house is too tall underground
Many jurisdictions will impose height limits on houses in order to keep densities the way the elected city councils want them. Many times, it's for the livability of neighborhoods so people don't build five story condos next to single story houses. Sometimes, it's for aesthetics so people don't build townhomes in a rural setting. Occasionally, it's for pragmatic reasons so someone doesn't, say, build a tall building in front of an airport runway. Sometimes the code will measure from the finished grade to the top of a ridge or parapet wall. Other times, the code will set a limit to the midpoint between the eave and ridge. When the grades are sloped, the code often will prescribe an average or midpoint of the grades. Unfortunately, many times the code isn't perfectly clear or well defined. One of my colleagues ran into this issue with a planner. The code specified a height limit, but although it wasn't specified, these height limits are pretty mu...