Modern building materials are great if applied perfectly. And what are the chances of every builder on every part of a house applying every material perfectly every time? Zero. All it takes is one little leak. www2.philly.com/real-estate/ho…
Getting water into your wall is no problem if you allow it a way out. But modern houses are built to control the indoor climate as much as possible (often for no reason at all), so the last thing you want is less than an airtight seal. So you end up with rot and sick people.
If you understand that no building is 100% perfect, why build in a way that hides the problem until it is too late to fix? A crack in that perfect stucco wall looks like nothing, but three years of rain (no eaves, remember this is Progressive!) and your wall is toxic sponge cake.
Should a homeowner actually find a problem in almost all cases he can't fix it. And a modern wall is a hugely complex design. It ends up being cheaper to tear it down and rebuild it. So much for your green home certificate. Repeat until broke (that three year warranty...).
Compare with traditional material like solid wood. Carbon sink. Grows in your backyard. It LAUGHS at water. It eats humidity for breakfast. We built ships like this for 4000 years. When the bottom log goes soft you get dad's carjack and a hand-axe. Good as new in an afternoon. 
A stone wall, should it start failing after 500 years of Huns, Rain, and Snow, can be repaired by a seven year old armed with a butter knife and a bucket of lime mortar. Not great r-value, granted (just about on par with state of the art 21st c glass and steel office buildings).
The point of traditional material is sacrificial layers. In brick walls that is usually stucco. Or the mortar itself (being softer than brick). Here some idiot used cement mortar (harder than the brick). Still, easy to fix (lots of labour of c. but what else are teenagers for?).
Modern building methods are perfected for a single purpose: to deflect accountability. Who do you blame when the walls sprout mushrooms? The builder? The sub contractor? One of the 120+ manufacturers of the materials in your house? The bank? The code? Climate change? Insurance?
Why do people insist on mortgaging their entire future earnings on a home that is more than likely to fail on them? There are two reasons ordinary people fall for the Salesmen: 1, lack of experience and 2, lack of knowledge.
1. Very few people in Western countries today have any experience of living in homes built of traditional materials. We do not know how to fire a stove, we don't know how a good brick home should "feel like", we don't know what the a healthy uninsulated attic smells like.
2. Schools teach us NOTHING about materials, construction, architecture, heating, ventilation, etc. Most likely the building professions are happy to keep people ignorant. And by now our teachers are as ignorant as our parents. Why not have each class build a vernacular cottage?
And then, the life span of a building. Let's upset heaven and earth to ban plastic straws but no-one mention how much garbage modern building construction produces (first during manufacturing of parts, then construction, then teardown): all of it will go to the landfill. 100%.
When these houses are eventually torn down, what you can't safely leave, recycle, repurpose, reuse, resell, upcycle or compost, well, the amount of material can be carried in your pocket.
