Its fascinating how different building Houses is in USA and Germany. The typical US Woodhouse is easy and fast to build. In Germany it can take a Year to build a "Massiv" House:
I remember helping my father to restore a 100+ year old house. We completely raised the roof to fix the brickwork... after this replaced the roof in segments, addressed each room individually... etc etc... renovating everything, add new waterwork, modernize the electricity in an existing house. It took long... but the result is also there!
Structural masonry is a really bad idea in seismically active areas (which evidently Germany is not).
Also consider the renewable + cost + timber supply factor, when it comes to population. Germany's population has barely increased since 1970. The US population has increased by ~55% in that time, adding over 100 million people. Rarely building new structures for a stagnate population base is a very different consideration vs building for a population that has been quite expansive for over a century. Just on the environmental concerns alone, I don't think you want the US to rebuild all of its housing with concrete.
The median US house is between 50% and 100% larger than the median house in developed Europe, at half the price or less per sq metre. The median US house is generally the first or second largest in the world.
Maintenance is not dramatic for wood structures, assuming they're properly built. Once they're enclosed, if properly maintained, you should have to do relatively little work to the core structure of the building over many decades. As it pertains to heating & cooling, high quality insulation today means there's little concern for external weather, whether you're in New Hampshire or Arizona.
Whenever I see a report about a tornado or a hurricane in the US I wonder what the damage would be like if people had stone houses instead of wooden houses that disintegrate during a storm and then in turn damage other houses. It reminds me of the Kessler Syndrome.
Pitched roofs do well against storms (30° roof slope is best).
Luckily, we don't have deadly hurricanes.
Even if the structure remains intact - and storm surges have no problem washing concrete and stone away - the house has to be ripped apart. The flooding ruins sheetrock, furniture, carpet, etc and mold growth is a huge issue.
The wind is usually not that big a deal unless you have a tornado during the hurricane. I have a 100 year old wood framed house that has been though many hurricanes, including Katrina. Generally the worst case wind-wise for most people is that you see some minor roof damage and little else unless a tree falls on the house. Wooden houses certainly do not "disintegrate" during storms.
Debris doesn't cause a lot of damage, particularly if you've prepped for the hurricane (by boarding up windows, garaging cars, etc.) The biggest factors are definitely trees and storm surge.
Having the same percentage of forests is not the same thing as having the same supply of renewable timber. You're forgetting about population density. The US has vastly more timber supply vs population, than Germany does.
US territory size is something like 26x the size of Germany, with just 4x the population difference.
304 million hectares of forests vs 330 million people in the US. A near 1 ratio for hectares per person.
11 million ha of forests vs 82 million people in Germany. A 0.13 ratio.
Now throw in Canada, which is an almost comical 347 million ha (and their modest domestic needs for 36 million people).
edit: adjusted the US figure to hectares
[0] http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Built-Environment/Building/Buildi...
Probably partly from ownership of buildings transitioning form wealthy capitalists to middle class. For the capitalist the house is an investment since they get rent from it, but for the middle class family who own their house the house constitutes a huge portion of their wealth. Banks are the main winners, as they profit from loaning money to middle class to purchase the house.
The second factor is the rise of cities. As more people come closer together, the value of land naturally rises. Hence, the "natural" portion of the houses price does not come from the structure itself, but from the value of the land, and the market forces demand for the building.
If the building becomes... defunct, a huge portion of the middle class familys wealth disappears (sans the land - but, often the land is rented from someone).
Hence it's nice to imagine buildings last forever, while paying back your 50 year loan on the house.
(As an Australian - we completely fall on the American side of that remark)
Wooden houses can (from experience) survive magnitude 6-7 earthquakes.
Japanese pagodas have very interesting designs that keep them from toppling. My favorite is the Horyu-ji pagoda. Each floor is not connected to the one above it - they're just stacked, loosely. The floors shift independently during an earthquake. A gigantic central beam in the middle acts as a tuned mass damper, preventing them from sliding off entirely. One person can make the central beam sway. https://gizmodo.com/5846501/how-japans-oldest-wooden-buildin...
Tō-ji pagoda's design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG37gQSvrf4
Design really is everything.
Wood didn't last long, but until surprisingly recently, houses weren't meant to last. In Northern Europe, for example, even as late as the Iron Age, houses were rebuilt every few decades.
Exception: rich builders, like the church in Europe, and later on (roughly the thirteenth century) rich individuals, built out of stone.
You'll still need the DIY shops for hardware/tools/etc.