Another factor is seismic conditions (the OP was clearly most influenced by the Bay Area). Masonry or stone construction is incompatible with earthquakes.
No, brand new houses and apartment buildings in at least the Bay Area are of shoddy quality compared to brand new houses built to Northern European standards. Same goes for older houses. Doesn't matter if it's brick or wood or concrete, there's just a huge quality gap.
Some of it is explained by the climate, it always amuses me to see housing ads proudly proclaiming "double glazing!". Meanwhile, over here, triple glazing has been the legal minimum for decades, and older houses were required to retrofit it.
Some of it is explained by the british heritage, they can't build houses on the british isles either.
The rest, I don't know how to explain. I guess people simply don't know how good houses they could be having, and therefore don't crave it?
(I have relatives who, last I heard, live in trailers, err, manufactured homes, which I believe are pretty much unheard of as dwellings in northern Europe.)
There's more to quality construction than building out of brick (although I think brick houses will ride out an earthquake a lot better than you imagine, as some of the oldest houses around the Bay Area are made out of brick). It's other things like the fact that you build houses with Tyvek instead of insulating them properly, crappy aliminum windows, and so on. People here tend to tear their houses down and start over because a lot of houses are so poorly built that they're not worth repairing, rather than out of any aesthetic impulse.
But, I don't know anything. I grew up in Miami. A hurricane (Andrew) turned an entire town to kindling because the houses were so poorly constructed. Some of them had nothing but gravity holding the roof down.
One thing I do know is the next house I buy I'm building myself. I've rented far too many places that were so poorly constructed; it's indescribable. My last apartment was on 2 floors. Just walking around felt like there were giants over my head. The beams were so far apart you could feel the floor shift under your weight.
I lived in Edinburgh for a few years, and most of the apartments I lived in were built in the 19th century (maybe the 18th; I forget the details, but there were several major housing booms in Edinburgh back then). They all had walls made of stone blocks like half a meter thick, and that was typical for buildings from that era, which account for a huge proportion of the city-center housing stock. New suburban houses I saw, on the other hand, seemed liked they'd blow over in a stiff wind (something there was a plentiful supply of), and of course were ugly to boot...
[OTOH, it turned out that in one of the places I lived, the drinking-water tank was made of lead...! >< So if my comments seem kinda dumb... TT ]
I heard of a guy who built a German standard home in a hurricane zone in Florida (must have been insanely expensive). When the next hurricane did come the only damage to his house came from the shrapnel of broken apart american-style houses.
SF has historically shoddy construction due to the gold rush, mail order housing bought sight unseen, and a mild climate.
If I built a house in the US I would have it designed by a European.