Maybe it's regional; all of our projects are like this down here in Florida, in order to get SWFWMD and/or ACOE approval.
My residential projects usually include two types of lots:
Those adjacent a storm water management area (pond, or lake), grade 1% up from R/W to mid lot, then back down 1-2% to rear lot line, with a finished floor 1' above the higher mid lot grade.
The other being away from any pond/lake, which grades 1% up from R/W to half of the rear setback distance (10' rear setback == 5' rear lot swale flow line), then 6" up from the rear lot swale to the actual rear lot line, and then daylight a out to existing surface. The finished floor being 1' above the higher rear lot swale elevation.
There are other types of lot grading, as I'm sure most of you well know, but this is pretty common down here (at least for where I work).
For earthwork estimating, we generally assume a building pad to be the size of the building setback envelope (rarely do I have a finished product to place in my plans; just footprints usually) - most projects are 20' front (with 10' Public utility easement), 10' rear, and 3-6' sides depending on applicable zoning code - less an 8" thick concrete pad.
Not sure what he earthwork is going to be for this particular project yet (still grading the site, modifying for drainage, etc), but my other recent residential project was in the 1.2M CY of net cut, which the client ended up requiring I drop the 1,000 AC site to reduce down to 700K CY of net cut, using this same methodology - usable fill is at a premium down here (not sure about up North?), but if you don't have a buyer, it costs you more to move the dirt than it's worth.
What sort of site grading do you do for your projects?
Cheers