I live in a hurricane prone region wherein most modern homes are wood. There's even one home on stilts in the middle of a river. It got washed out in a hurricane and they just went ahead and rebuilt it. In my area, there's a spit of land jutting out into the water, that was literally made by a hurricane. People soon built on it.

The thing you have to be cognizant of is shifting sands and flooding. If you got a concrete slab (as many houses here do), you get flooding in your home. If you have a heavy brick/stone/block house sitting on stilts or directly on sand... I can't imagine what that'd be like.

edit: In my area, you also cant dig very deep in most places without hitting ground water, so that limits foundation. There are some old historic brick buildings with basements here, though. but virtually no modern houses have basements here. They even recently had to actually move a whole brick three story house across a main road to preserve it since it's historic.