That plywood house (the one that's not tipped over) is soooooo snugged up in that sheathing, do you suppose it's a PassiveHaus or something? Or is it a California home being fireproofed by wrapping it all in plywood then spraying stucco over every surface? That doesn't look like typical US construction.

Donna, it may not be typical US construction, but it is typical Canadian since the houses in the pictures are in the Toronto area and the plywood between the two houses is req for fire ratting.

Regardless, anchor bolts between the top of foundation and exterior wall stud sill plate is required by Ontario code to resist wind forces... sure looks like they were not provided as prescribed. Probably no diagonal brace through (or on top) of the stud framing either.

Then the ice storm last week, locusts next...

sort of looks like the ground under the foundation dropped.  maybe a sinkhole or liquefaction or something like that?

Why are houses in America mostly made from Ply or other woods/timbers? Other than cost.

archiwutm8 I have to quote Scarlett O'Hara:

Scarlett: And lumber, too. Frank Kennedy: Well that's only a sideline. Scarlett : A sideline, Frank? With all the good Georgia pine around Atlanta and all this building going on?

Which totally doesn't answer your question but I guess since we're talking about houses being Gone with the Wind....

My mind pooped and didn't connect the abundance of material to design... ..NVM but still, wouldn't brick/concrete/ any other type of masonry be more suited? In the UK I don't think I've really seen many houses made from anything other than stone/brick.

There's a lot of red brick in Virginia, but that doesn't explain why you don't see as much in southern parts of the Piedmont and Coastal Plain regions. 

Perhaps it's a combination of climate, resources, time, and labor leading to vernacular construction methods?

(a "high" vernacular)

Archiwutm8, climate and seasonal changes are more extreme in the US than in the UK, which is hard on masonry; we've always had an abundance of timber, whereas yours has been nearly gone since the middle ages; it's faster to build with wood; until recently it's been easier to make the interiors of wood buildings more comfortable with less energy use, compared to masonry; the workforce has been more accustomed to wood framing; our population density is much less than yours which means less chance of fires spreading; the list goes on. Where there have been fires in cities, they have been rebuilt with masonry and/or steel construction, and of course there are very few commercial projects built with wood these days.

Properly detailed and executed there should be no reason for a wood building to fail before a masonry building.

i think wood is lighter, easier to ship, faster to build, lower labor costs. . .  considerable cost savings, pretty much from the time they plant the tree to the time they have to dispose of it.

in a lot of cases along the east coast, predominant construction reflects the migrant populations that settled the area.  danish had brick, germans had stone and timber frames, english might have been more clad wood frame houses, etc.  so it may not be that brick was common in the area, but it was common where the settlers came from, and they wanted their new place to look like what they were familiar with.

a brick veneer isn't really brick construction, it's just made to look like brick construction. 

Wait... are people suggesting we go back and do true masonry houses in suburbia?

Timber is cheap, readily available, sustainable (hint, it grows on trees) and easy to work with. The problems in the OP's pictures would have been avoided if the builders had followed the national codes and CHMC guides.

"true" masonry construction would now be concrete block, which is still pretty common.

Personally, I'm ok with timber construction, it's the bad "marzipan" cladding that get to me. 

never seen a movie where a guy punches somebody through a wall - you would have to be a ninja to make it through finish, ply, insulation and drywall and still have enough power to hurt a man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP9pqqtDvXI

There's a classic "crashing through a wall" scene with Van Damme in the original Universal Soldier, which I couldn't find easily. First saw it when I was 7, and it seemed totally insane because at the time I lived in a place where most walls were concrete. Then I moved to North America and experienced the stickbuilt houses, and that scene (and others like it) became at least plausible, though still unlikely IRL due to the studs behind the drywall. This sequel shows Dolph Lundgren throw JCVD through a CMU wall, shattering the limits of perception ever further.

This essay had a huge impact on me in grad school. The very short version of the argument is that the stick-built 2x4 construction of most US houses is demonstrative of the democratic society in which we live, in that one or two members can fail but the house will remain standing; all together they are incredibly strong.

An American Culture of Construction, Perspecta Vol. 25, Tom F. Peters.

it's funny how walls are flimsy enough to fall through (with a bit of a push), but ductwork in movies is always strong enough to use as a catwalk.

Is this really news to anybody, that houses are sheathed in plywood (or OSB or GWB)? To be clear, the plywood is acting as sheathing, in that it's acting to resist shear. Nothing to do with fire rating. You could put the sheathing on the interior side of the studs, but on the exterior it makes for a convenient substrate for air/weather barriers, insulation, and cladding (similar to a load bearing masonry or concrete wall).

^ plywood on the outside can act as FRR when there is an exposing face issue with the adjacent property line.

^ Only as part of a rated assembly, really any sheathing can contribute as such (OSB, ext. GWB).

Plywood almost going by the wind, almost movie walls.

...a million and a half dollar plywood home...

Sounds like an oxymoron.