Don,

The ground motion would probably be different...but you could just build the house to resist strong ground motion of all likely kinds. But, if I am correct that for a given distance from a fault and a given magnitude etc, the thrust mostion would be more damaging...so, if you just barely built it strong enough to, say, resist 0.25 g at, say, 5 Hz, and you got 1 g at 5 Hz...you would be in trouble (I am guessing the most damaging frequency for, say, a 2 story home..)
Chris