You have a split entry. We lived in one for several years. I worked on a couple of homes with the entry on the bottom level. It was not a pleasant situation entering and having to climb stairs. Cold and uninviting, no matter how brightly lit the stairs were. Always reminded me of entering an apartment building.

Yeah we have a ton of those kind of houses here. That was a design to save cost. Do you have a pair of stairs on each side? So you basically can go up and down going left or right? If so then thats the house Im thinking of. We have those houses here, then down the street they are the same thing but with one little tweek. There is a wall down the middle and these are town homes.

My old house was like this. Here is the entry.

Mid-Century Inspired Remodel · More Info

Right when you walk in, there is a staircase down to the basement. So the only thing at this level is the entry.

This house was completely gutted. The entry was originally on the side of the house but we moved it to the front. Moving an entry and staircase is no small undertaking. It affects almost every other part of the home. Before and after:

We call those bi-levels here and they are still incredibly popular where I am as new builds - I was surprised when I moved here. These days though they often seem to come with more generous entry areas. I would not move the entry "down", if anything, move it "up" but then be aware:

1. You will have a lot more stairs outside to get in;

2. You will need to change inside floor/stairway a lot to address a staircase to go down the lower level;

3. Reconfiguring stairs is costly;

4. Stairways take up a lot of space (and if you have older stairs, you may expect more space to be taken up due to Code changes since it was built).