Also, you shouldn't forget a few things: 1) Wood is cheap in large parts of the USA. Like, really cheap. And you can do a lot yourself. That's no comparison of the costs between wood and stone. 2) A full-grown hurricane also tears apart quite a few houses here. A wooden house is cheaper and faster to rebuild then. 3) As hampshire says, the relationship to the house is different. 4) There are many areas in the USA that are not climatically comparable to us. 5) The USA mostly has truly poor soil because it was hardly compacted during the ice age. That's why almost everything has to be founded on piles there. Here, you can usually build on slabs, which is much simpler. If you were to create an "installation level," you would first need a support grid on which the slab rests. Possibly even in the basement, which would cause even more soil excavation. Or the house would stick further out of the ground, which then presents another frost protection problem. Ultimately, you could do it, but whether the benefit is in a reasonable proportion to the additional cost is another question.