A difficulty in the modelling of water infiltration into an unsaturated soil is due to the presence of a diffusion coefficient that blows up at the moisture saturation value. This is put in evidence in some well-known hydraulic models like those of Broadbridge and White and van Genuchten. In this paper, we obtain results concerning the existence, uniqueness and regularity properties of the solution of unsaturated water flow determined by a time-dependent rainfall, with a nonlinear flux boundary condition on the outflow boundary and a singular diffusion coefficient. Some considerations related to the possibility of saturation occurrence and the extension of the results to the model describing the infiltration into an nonhomogeneous stratified soil are finally made.