This was written in 1875 by Henry Hudson Holly^1

Our materials, climates, and habits differ enough from those of Europe to demand a distinctive change in their use and arrangement. For example, in European countries, wood, a most valuable building material, is rare and expensive, while in most sections of our own it is very abundant. But instead of using this in accordance with its nature and capacities, we have stupidly employed it in copying, as exactly as we can, details of foreign architecture which were designed with reference to the constructive capacities of brick and stone. Hence we see rounded arches, keystones, and buttresses of wood… Fortunately our people are beginning to recognize the folly of such unmeaning shams, and when stone or brick is adopted, it is treated as such; and when wood is employed, we are properly commencing to show details adapted to its nature. Until, however, we come to possess a vernacular style, we must content ourselves to copying; and the question arises, which of the innumerable systems is best suited to our requirements?

Architecture and construction practices are regional and cultural. What works gets repeated and over time it becomes so common that people forget why things are done a certain way. This is known as vernacular architecture.

The history of construction materiality goes something like this: the only structural materials available were stone, brick, and wood. The gaps in the structure were then infilled in with sticks, mud mixed with horse hair, animal dung, plaster, or more wood and brick if you could afford it. Houses were heated and meals were cooked with open flames and because of this they often burned down. Due to that last fact, people preferred stone and brick homes if they could afford them. That’s architecture for 98% of human history (time since the invention of stick framing divided by time since the neolithic revolution) and largely the period in which Europeans developed their construction technologies and prejudices.

The US developed in a climate where there were endless virgin forests that weren't exhausted until after WWI. There was a lot of construction technology innovation as well. Balloon framing (or at least it was popularized here), platform framing, skyscrapers, steel, the twists (now deformations) in steel reinforced concrete, slurry walls, fast tracked construction, etc. were all invented here. The materials available to us, what works for our more diverse climate, and subsequently what became our regional vernacular, are different. For a similar but different timeline check out Japan's construction and home preferences.

I understand that timber frames are cost effective as opposed to something like limestone, but brick is actually in a comparable price range.

This is likely semantics, but it’s a good jumping off point - timber frames are far more expensive than what we typically build, and hence are rarely used as a structural system today. They’re what you think of when you think of old Medieval towns or Amish barn construction. It employs large timbers; 6x6, 8x10, etc. (inches in cross section). It can be beautiful, but it requires skilled labor, many people, complicated connections, and large trees; all of which are anathema to producing a home inexpensively today. It’s also a less efficient use of timber. There are countries (Japan) and technologies (Dietrich software, CLT, glulams, etc.) that are changing this, but that's a different topic.

The successor to timber framed construction, balloon framing using 2x4s, was invented/popularized in Chicago in the early 19th century. Walls several stories tall consisted of long 2x4s that were assembled on the ground and tilted up. Ledger boards would be attached to the balloon framing and floors would be built off of them. Buildings could be built much more quickly using this method because individual workers could handle the pieces of wood and connections could be made with nails. The issue with this method of construction is that it requires long mature trees. That and the attachment of the ledger board to the balloon framing left a gap in the stud cavity which fire could and often did spread to upper floors through. For this reason it's rarely used or allowed today.

The successor to balloon framing is platform framing. The walls of each floor are built individually, tilted up, and the floors are built on top of them. This requires shorter pieces of lumber and the floor stops fire from spreading. This is what's used today. Why? Because it’s ridiculously inexpensive, and performs well. 2x4 stud walls are like aluminum cans. In a certain way, they’re right at the edge of being junk, but there’s also pure genius behind their design and function.

You’re correct that brick, as a material, is quite cheap (~50 cents each), but it requires far more and higher skill labor which ultimately makes it very expensive in the US. We also use less of it which further increases the price. The US and our largest trading partner, Canada, have lots of trees so lumber is (until Covid hit) cheap. That and the US contains quite a few very cold and seismic regions both of which do not lend themselves to masonry construction.

The combination of all the above: technologies invented here, cheap lumber, lack of existing housing supply, rapid population growth, varied climates, a shift away from heating with open flames, etc. meant that the conditions in which America developed its construction preferences was different than that of Europe's. The fact that we're still building out of 2x4s is some combination of industry inertia mixed with the genius that is the 2x4 wall. SIPs (structurally insulated panels), ICFs (insulated concrete forms), or advanced framing with 2x6s are all "better" alternatives technologically.

Even modern homes in the UK built in the 2000s have real brick walls, and quality floorboards.

Are current homes in the UK really built with solid brick walls? I like masonry. It has a lot of favorable attributes (inexpensive material, fireproof, high thermal mass, doesn’t rot, absorbs acoustic energy, literally bullet proof), but it also has some serious drawbacks (poor thermal insulator, requires skilled labor, performs poorly in earthquakes, can’t use it in tension). In the US, when you see a brick home that isn’t a hundred years old it’s actually a veneer system called a cavity wall. That is, it’s a 2x4 structure that holds up a single wythe (one brick thick) brick veneer. If constructed properly it’s an excellent way to build. Almost no one constructs it properly, but it suffers fools well.

“Quality floorboards” is a loaded topic. Do you mean wide solid hardwood boards? Because wood expands and contracts in three directions but primarily radially which is why floorboards tend to cup. The wider they are the more they cup. Beautiful, yes. Flat, no. To help with this you cut them short around the perimeter so they can expand and contract. Then you place trim around the perimeter to hide this gap. Engineered floors use cross laminated plywood which is dimensionally stable so you can rethink all those trim details that hide the edges of your floating floor. That and it stays flat.

How has the history of architecture and construction in the US resulted in multi million dollar houses being made with low quality materials

There are certainly a lot of low quality materials in contemporary US homes (previous IAMA that discusses this), but consider several factors:

1. The largest, by volume, thing that most people buy is a car. Think of how much it costs and how large it is. Now consider how many times larger a house is. If you paid the same price per pound, as Buckminster Fuller suggested and tried after WWII using idled airplane manufacturing facilities, or volume, even basic homes would cost many times what they currently cost. We need to use inexpensive materials because we need so much of them. Europe gets around this by having a large supply of existing high quality buildings (survivorship bias), living in smaller spaces, having lower rates of home ownership, and accepting higher construction prices and longer payback periods for commercial buildings (at least in Germany which I'm more familiar with).
2. Inexpensive does not equal bad. Construction materials prior to the widespread use of iron and steel primarily only worked in compression. Think about that for a moment. Stone/masonry only really works in compression. That's why you can't build floors and roofs out of it easily. Wood works in compression and tension equally well and it’s light, renewable, easy to work, it’s warm to the touch, doesn’t transfer heat as rapidly as masonry, etc. It’s a fantastic building material. Every material we use is, in some sense, amazing at what it does. Think gypsum board (drywall is a trade name like Kleenex) is "low quality?" It stops sound well, it doesn't burn, it's flat, inexpensive, and it's way faster to build with than plaster and lath. Every material has its place and when compared to what preceded it is typically incredible.

I had to leave a lot out, so please feel free to ask questions.

Sources:

1 - Mallgrave, Harry Francis, and Christina Contandriopoulos. Architectural Theory Volume II An Anthology from 1871-2005. Wiley-Blackwell, 2008, pp. 44, 45.

I’m a licensed architect in Illinois.

This will be my first time posting an answer here – so I hope I get the format right, but I love vernacular architecture so thought I should have a go.

Understanding vernacular architecture is about breaking down environmental considerations, material availability, competencies of the local workforce, and other social considerations (cultural and historical). So in this answer, I’d like to split this up into several areas along the lines of materials, competencies and social considerations, comparing the U.S. to Europe. All three are quite tightly linked and are as relevant an issue today as they were historical.

So, in America, you have much wood. I mean, you have huge, ginormous amounts of wood, even after several centuries of deforesting for lumber and farmland, the US is still a massive exporter of lumber, both hard and soft (see USDA – global exports – lumber). That is just the exports, your domestic consumption is equally staggering (Bumgardner, Service and Luppold, 2016). If something is prevalent, it is going to be cheaper. Now, in recent years that begun to change as U.S. exports have been driving the price up a bit (ibid) as Chinese demand for U.S. lumber has skyrocketed. That might account for your observation that brick appears to be of similar value now.

In Europe, aside from Scandinavian countries, the relative area of forest is around 30-40% (Forest Research, 2015). As you’ve noted, these places tend to have more brick or blockwork construction. As I’ve already alluded to the Scandinavian countries are quite different, boasting upwards of 70% forest density. In these areas, you would more commonly see wood construction more than brick or block. So comparatively, what is North America at? You only have 35% coverage, that’s in keeping with Europe… but that also equates to 2134 million hectares, which is very comparable with Europe, even with the Scandinavian and Russian influences adding to it. Better still, around 95% of your wood is native lumber (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, 2020) what better to build your building with, than something that has, quite literally, grown up in that environment. In the case of the U.K., our forest density is very low at (13%) (ibid.). This scarcity drives up the prices, making it less appealing to work with.

So, social considerations. The density of population can also be a major factor in things and something that can cause a large social change in the attractiveness of building buildings with certain types of materials. If you have high population densities, the attractiveness of lumber construction, decreases, particularly from the point of view of the local municipality. In the U.K., we’ve had some incidents (see a certain fire in 1666) that led to the wholesale destruction of a city and policy brought in that barred the use of wood from the city. If you have enough land between properties – this is less of an issue as the fire won’t spread between as easily. Going back to competencies, if you’ve just had a city rebuilt in brick and stone, you now have a population of builders who are familiar with this mode of construction.

So let’s bring some figures in, in general, America, in comparison to Europe, has a far lower population density, both historically and even to today (around 36 people per Km2 compared to around 100-280 per Km2 of European nations (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2019). The other upshot of lower densities (obviously we are talking in general here, rather than say in the centre of cities) is that is cheaper so you can build bigger houses. Australia, Canada, America… top three for house size (Statista, 2017). WHICH IS AMAZING! Because so much of your population lives in the relatively higher density cities, in smaller abodes, that the average of your nation can be swayed by huge sizes elsewhere is just incredible.

So what does this have to do with wood? Well… technology. The technological aspect that has kept wood very prevalent is that it’s harmonious with American technological advances in home heating over the past century in and a half. Two technologies. Air-injected heating and airconditioning. Let’s start with Air-injected heating. This is uncommon in Europe within vernacular architecture. That’s not to say that it not found, just that it is uncommon.

There are many reasons why that was and still is the case but consider simply the space requirements. The amount of heat that water can carry around 4,000 times the heat energy as a similar volume of air, hence pipes are much smaller than ductwork. So going back to population densities and house sizes, if you have a smaller place, ideally you don’t want to be taking up more of it with large ducting. Secondly, it is much harder to retrofit ducting into brickwork houses that predate central heating (CIBSE – The Quest for comfort by Roberts is a great book on this that really drills down on how comfort systems evolved in the U.K. over the last). And, as central heating became prevalent in retrofitting, competencies were gained in installing hot water central heating, so it became the norm, that reinforced a method of vernacular construction.

Water central heating doesn’t lend itself to another American vernacular technology that is very uncommon in central and Northern Europe - Air conditioning (see this cool article by the Smithsonian - at the bottom or Healy’s account (2008)). Airconditioning is relatively easy to install if you have, lots of ducts and, it works best if you’re cooling people by blowing cool air instead of trying to cool the materials (Fanger, 1970) (think of your car’s blower).

So, to summarise, why does America build in wood? Because you can build big, without (relatively) risking burning down your neighbours. It was and still is, plentiful, and you have a workforce that is very familiar with it. Your technology has evolved harmoniously with wood construction in a way that you have come to define, socially, as being comfortable (I recommend reading Goodchild et al. (2019) accounts of comfort practices in the U.K. for a comparison). These things reinforce each other, and as each new building is made, so to does it increase the likelihood that the next building built will be similar (see social practice theory for that).

As a bonus, here is a wonderful video of British bricklaying by Pathe circa 1940’s - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldR3nrWhw8s

References

Bumgardner, M.S., Service, U.S.F. and Luppold, W.G. (2016) Domestic Hardwood Lumber Consumption And Exports, Yesterday And Today National Hardwood Magazine. Christmas. 30-33. Christmas.

Goodchild, B., Ambrose, A. and Maye-Banbury, A. (2017) Storytelling as oral history: Revealing the changing experience of home heating in England. Energy Research and Social Science [online]. 31 (November 2016), pp. 137–144. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.06.009doi:10.1016/j.erss.2017.06.009.

Fanger, P.O. (1970) Thermal comfort. Analysis and applications in environmental engineering. Thermal comfort. Analysis and applications in environmental engineering. [online]. Available from: https://www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/abstract/19722700268 [Accessed 30 August 2018].

Healy, S. (2008) Airconditioning and the ‘homogenization’ of people and built environments. Building Research and Information. 36 (4), pp. 312–322. doi:10.1080/09613210802076351.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/unexpected-history-air-conditioner-180972108/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1052988/average-home-size-selected-countries-worldwide/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/183475/united-states-population-density/

First question I may be able to contribute to!  Long time listener, first time caller so to speak.  Some excellent answers here already, but I can contribute as well.

While not directly involved in home construction, I am a housing finance professional (Capital Markets specifically, more traditionally known as Secondary Marketing) with frequent interaction with home construction professionals, appraisers and appraisal/valuation best practices, and market influences.

As you might expect this is a complex issue with multiple possible contributing factors.  I’d propose that the more appropriate question is “Why are some homes and buildings in the US made with low quality materials?” as it is certainly not true that 100% of US new construction homes are made from low quality materials.  Neither is it true that European homes are exclusively made from high quality materials.  It isn’t my goal to challenge the ‘fairness’ of your question, but I would like to address the ‘absolute’ nature of the phrasing a little bit.

According to data from the UK government existing homes in the UK are impressively old.  Roughly 37% of all homes were built around or before World War II (1944 or earlier).  Only 15% of homes were built after 1990. (1)

Contrast that to the US where according to US census data roughly 17% of existing homes were built around or before World War II (1949 and earlier), and 33% of existing homes were built in 1990 or later. 2

This is important as it drives to the potential bias of your question.  If construction materials in general are trending towards more inexpensive options due to supply, technological innovations, changes in building/environmental codes or economic factors on a global scale, that would have a more apparent effect in areas with higher concentrations of modern construction. 

Please note that statement is addressing my opinion of potential bias and its possible cause(s).  My primary source material for European construction quality is too inadequate to make a declarative statement.  While my anecdotal knowledge of new construction in Europe is that it is trending towards affordability, more research is needed.

I think we should also address “Manufactured Homes”.  Manufactured Homes can be considered ‘new construction’ depending on the speaker and the audience, but are typically pre-fabricated complete structures or pre-fabricated modular parts of a structure which are built off-site and then shipped and installed on the property. 

A typical manufactured home is designed to be as cost efficient as possible, current US Census data puts the average cost of a manufactured home at $88,200.00.  Significantly below the 2019 median US single family home price of $321,500. 2

Notable exceptions aside, calling manufactured homes “cheap” may be insensitive but would probably not be considered unfair by a reasonable person.  They are simply purpose-built, and that purpose is generally not to become a longstanding landmark or hurricane shelter.  Note that material quality and square footage are not the sole factors in the value of manufactured homes.  Laws vary by state and municipality, but manufactured homes are often subject to zoning restrictions that make them ineligible in affluent and high-property value areas.  A major component in US home value and appraisals are “comparable values” or ‘comps’.  If nearby comps are in less affluent neighborhoods perceived value will also drop.

Note also that the descriptor “site-built” or “stick-built” is most often used to differentiate a manufactured home from contractor-built home that is fully assembled on site, and the commonly understood meaning of “building your own home” is site-built. 

Your question also asks about the US as a whole.  It should be noted that this is ignoring a significant possible factor in both local home construction material and personal bias of perceived home construction quality.  To briefly illustrate that point, going back to manufactured homes, they account for roughly 7.5% of all single family dwellings in the entire country.  If we focus solely on Rhode Island that percentage drops to less than 2%.  If we focus on Alabama that number jumps to close to 20%.  There are many potential economic and social driving factors contributing to that difference in concentration which I will not attempt to address here.

Unsurprisingly construction material quality factors will primary or indirectly revolve around the ROI or “Return on Investment”.  Simply put, builders, home owners and the US government/local municipalities need to make sure new housing construction is profitable (Albacore_futures response addresses how important the economic role of housing finance and homeownership is in the US economy.  Outside of pedantic nit-picking they pretty much nail it).  This does not mean factors such as aesthetic, durability, and safety are not important, but the counter-balance to their importance is always cost.

It is also critically important to understand how home value is determined.  In the US a home’s value is determined by a licensed appraiser.  These determinations have seen objectivity improvements thanks to regulations implemented in the fallout of the housing crisis of 2007/2008, but there remains a substantial amount of subjectivity in the process.  Aside from notable exceptions known as “Appraisal waivers” or “Property Inspections Waivers” which are becoming increasingly common (primarily on refinance loans), an appraisal is required to obtain a mortgage on a home.

Appraisers take all reasonable factors into consideration when making a determination.  This does include construction materials.  However, they also rely heavily on the ‘comps’ mentioned earlier.  A valid comparable property typically needs to geographically close to the subject property but also as similar as possible in style and square footage.  This means if you are building a home a larger square footage will generally increase both its inherent value the value of valid comparable homes.  This leads us to the ROI judgement call, more affordable materials and a larger home, or more quality materials and a smaller home?

Setting aside the profit and ROI motivations of development and construction companies, that answer may not be as simple as it seems for a private person building their own home.

If the future homeowners are wealthy enough to fund the construction without the need for a secured loan it’s purely personal preference (outside of meeting local building codes and HOA regulations where applicable).  However, if financing must be secured the cost of construction must be supported by the appraisers best estimate of final value for the bank or institution to lend the money and still meet regulatory requirements.

To reiterate what other posters have said, less expensive housing materials does not mean cheap or dangerous.  Will a pure titanium home with a high performance 50,000PSI concrete foundation last longer than more traditional timber construction and 2500PSI concrete?  Certainly, but securing financing may be impossible and the traditional construction materials are likely more than adequate if properly maintained.

Of course that example is hyperbole, but it is simply illustrating the balancing act involved in determining what materials to use.

1 (Department for Communities and Local Government “English Housing Survey Headline Report 20130-14”, Feb 2015)

2 (2019 US Census “Characteristics of New Housing”  Highlights)