Started building a house but the lot was too small, so saved it to the library and removed it from that lot. Restarted that world, went to Edit Town and selected a larger lot, imported the house, placed it on that lot, centered it, okayed that and returned to build mode ....where the house is in a pit. Could find no way to raise the structure to ground level so accepted the challenge of finishing it as it sat and landscaping around it. But why did the house appear in a pit? (it was on level ground went built and exported) and is there a way to correct that?

Fwiw ......

You have to use a cheat to align the lot with street level when placing it via Edit Town.

First, bulldoze the house. Before placing it again press Ctrl+Shift+C, type "testingcheatsenabled true", hit Enter. Then, press Ctrl+Shift+C again and type "setimportedterrainoffset <value>". The value must be a number, and it can be positive/negative, or decimal like 1.5 (In your case it needs to be positive). If you don't get it right on the first try, you can keep retyping the cheat with different numbers until you get it right. Next, use "constrainfloorelevation off" to flatten and even out the lot if some parts get raised or sunken.

Once you are done placing this lot and want to place a normal one that isn't raised/sunken, set "setimportedterrainoffset" back to 0 so the height offset doesn't apply to your next lot.

EDIT: You could also use "constrainfloorelevation off" entirely but you have to redo the leveling of the floors and some objects can get raised above ground so you have to delete them and press CTRL+Z to return them, this time in their normal position

Thank you! I suspected some arcane command buried in the system.

I don't like this house (the top rooms have a wonderful view ....and a trek down four flights of spiral stairs to the bathrooms), though a friend deems it cool; it was designed as a feasibility study for a larger structure where each bedroom will be a small suite.