not suprised .  I live in a 4-storey townhouse with each floor dedicated to 1 unit only.
Looks like you're right.  seemed like developer trying to squeeze more units in a small land area.
Each unit is like a mini-double storey house but with a typical condo space of 1000++ sqr feet. Wondering how much space are used "wasted" for staircase.

Well,  since 1 floor allocated to each unit.. the porch ownership is half of a typical landed house  (22ft / 2 = 11feet width).  So anyone with more than 1 car will need to park back to back. After more than a decade living in such a townhouse... most owners with growing family (and wealth?)  eventually have 2 or more cars and parking issue will escalate .

For this Balakong one however.. I noticed each unit owned the whole porch , this looks like a plus point as 2 cars can be parked side by side.

The house design (upper units/floor entrance at the back) for  both my townhouse and this Balakong one,  are chosen since they're built on a hill slope.  For my case.. many of the units (mine included)  ended up with underground pipe leakage due to soil movement after many years  . I was forced to  reroute the piping system coz the contractor I hired FAILED to locate the leakage after wasting a day digging up my porch.

Advantage  of Ground floor owner unit include upper owner
occupied whole car porch
Disadvantage is:
Ground floor owner at back lane facing  retention wall right?