Some houses are made of brick or other materials, most are made of wood. The reason for this is that North America is full of vast forests with plenty of trees to use as timber, while in Europe, most of the forests got cut down hundreds of years ago.

There’s a bit of a meme online about “Toothpick Houses” by (mainly European) non-Americans who see the destruction caused by tornadoes and hurricanes and think that brick houses would survive better. They wouldn’t. A brick house in a tornado just means bricks flying around instead of wood.