Any idea of the cost per sqft (or square meter) to build your block house? I build wood-frame homes in the US for ~ $95/sqft. These are nice homes with decent finishes, proper insulation, etc but we benefit from low labor costs in my area.

Because there is a local abundance of materials and skilled laborers.

In the US you’d have trouble sourcing bricks and even more trouble hiring brick layers.

If you visit the north east the oldest building (upto 400 odd years old) are stick+frame because thats what they had available when they got off the boat, the workforce and techniques grew from there.

E.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairbanks_House_(Dedham,_Mas...

Edit: corrected 450 -> 400

I think it's more obvious if you've ever lived in or near the parts of the Pacific Northwest that produce a lot of the US and Canada's lumber supply for stick built houses. BC, WA, OR, ID. I personally know very little about the economics of bricks, but you can sit by the BNSF railway which runs from Seattle-Vancouver and watch entire southbound massive trainloads of BC lumber wrapped up in plastic, rolling south towards distribution and end users.

looks like this: http://vanderheide.ca/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/IMG_62...