In the olden days, I remember that poor people couldn't afford to build a concrete house because it is expensive. The most common house in those days were made of wood. And if the house is made of concrete then that means the family is wealthy. But now, it is very expensive to build a wooden house because wood is way much more expensive than cement. A plus factor in a concrete house is the durability and low cost maintenance not to mention the defense against termites.
Back in the 1950's an uncle of mine built a house of cement blocks. As far as I know, it's still in use.
The bottom half of our house is stucco while the upper is wood. I had to read up on the care and maintenance of stucco when it started bulging on one side of the house. I went to Lowes and they were very helpful. It was new to me as a DIY project and it looks awful compared to the rest of the area but I'll just paint it and it won't be as noticeable.
I saw a youtube article on redoing countertops out of concrete. I would be terrified to try doing something like that, because no doubt I would have a mess, and end up paying someone more to remove the concrete, and re do the job, but I have to admit, the concrete counter tops, were really kind of stunning, and seemed pretty easy to do, if you were someone who had a nack for something like that. It seemed a great opportunity to redo countertops for a handy person.
I had a friend in Texas who built a two-story house of concrete. He built it himself, in stages, and it seemed perfect for the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. It was cool inside, yet easy to heat on the rare occasions when heating was necessary, as the concrete would retain the heat. Plus, while it was certainly a lot of work, it was easy enough to do. Build the forms, add some rebar, and pour the concrete. The floors were hard though. He definitely needed some padding there.
The typical commercial buildings which went up in profusion in the Phoenix area during the 1970s, were built of concrete slabs, very large, transported to the work site and erected using huge cranes. They had no windows, very high walls perhaps 16 feet high or more. They were used as truck terminals, warehouses, and distribution centers. Hundreds were built in total, and by the early 1980 Recession, the vacancy rate of these was about 70%. Some investors lost a lot of dough!
That's one advantage of a "stone house" over a wooden house. The concrete house seems to be on the reverse of the weather because the atmosphere is somewhat cold even at high noon and quite warm at night. That is what we feel in the bedroom of our ground floor. Our second floor is made of wood but now we are thinking of remodeling it to concrete and to make the roof also concrete so it can block the heat of the sun. It's so hot in our bedroom at daytime so we always have to use the air conditioner.