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This is actually higher cost than your typical American house, which is just built with panels of wood put together haha

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I think this will vary greatly by region. In places where lumber is cheap and plentiful we have the typical American stick built house.

But it would be difficult to find a house in Rawalpindi, Pakistan that isn't composed from some combination of locally made small bricks, concrete blocks, concrete and cement.

I know a number of people that had never seen drywall, the building material, before immigrating to north america.

One reason people make houses out of brick/concrete in poorer regions, is that there are many people living in the same house. And wood houses are terrible at being soundproof, while brick/concrete houses are great at it.

Only in North America have I been told that I woke someone up in the middle of the night because I opened a door or got a glass of water from across the house because the house creaks and drums when you walk across it.

Many American houses indeed have terrible sound-proofing. But placing a higher value on that surely isn't why people in poor countries build of concrete blocks. Wood is plentiful in the US, and labor is expensive, this is mostly what drives the difference.

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