A strategy I found to get the first two levels of files of an SVN repository.

1. Start by checking out only root and 1st level of folders

mkdir temp
cd temp
svn co https://host.com/repos/repo . --depth immediates

2. Checkout content 1st level of folders

find ./ -type d ! -path "./.svn*" ! -path "./" -exec svn up --set-depth files {} \;

I guess it could also be used to go deeper if you use this version and run it more then once?

find ./ -type d ! -path "./.svn*" ! -path "./" -exec svn up --set-depth immediates {} \;