How long does a common residential house last?

My house is 76 years old. So the answer is 75 years.

In the US, he urban pundits of EVERY generation have pined that houses built before their generation will last forever, while those built during their time will last only 25 to 50 years. They said this during the post-War suburban boom of the 1950s and 1960s, during the go-go bungalow belt years of the 1920s, and during the very early streetcar suburb decades of the 1890s and 1900s. For the “older is better” crowd, I like to show them houses from the 1910s that were “lovingly hand crafted by immigrant carpenters who once built the great cathedrals of Europe” with sagging roofs and walls, and “ticky tacky” Capes from the early 1950s that are as good as new.

In areas where termites are an issue, what you described could be an issue, because local old-growth wood was more resistant to insect infestation. However, in a place like Florida, building houses of native bald cypress timber is no longer viable. It’s a very slow-growing tree, and its use in residential construction today would essentially condemn the genera to extinction. When I lived in Orlando, my house was made of brickfaced concrete block.