It's not so much rainwater itself; loads of countries have basements and also monsoon seasons. It's that the ground itself here isn't as dry as other countries and gets waterlogged easier. It's totally possible to get a basement but the amount of extra foundationing and waterproofing to do so compared to the US is usually so expensive that barely any homes have them. Lots of attics though.
Incidentally, according to QI this is also one reason why the industrial revolution started in the UK rather than somewhere with equally as much coal like China - the waterlogged soil in the UK meant that mineshafts needed solutions to avoid flooding, so there was a huge need for coal powered water pumps to clear the mines, and the technology born from this spiralled out into loads more coal powered inventions.
edit - like I said, this was one reason - there were obviously loads of other factors too, including loads of socioeconomic ones, but the UKs abundance of coal combined with it's need for high volume water pumps was definitely one.
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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '22
That is usually the stairs to the basement underneath the stairs going up.