Spot on. In pink below is all the land where it's literally illegal to build anything but a detached, single-family house. And that's not even touching on all the other restrictive land use regulation, such as the insanity that is parking minimums. If we want to have a mix of housing types, it needs to actually be legal to build more than one type.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/18/upshot/cities-across-america-question-single-family-zoning.html

Another part of it in the US is that the construction used in many apartments should be criminal. Every corner possible is cut. In every one of my apartments, save the one that was a converted 1920s hospital, I could gain access to neighbors' apartments through the ceiling, if I wanted, with no tools beyond a chair to stand on.

Every apartment that I've lived in also had electric baseboard heating placed before windows and poorly insulated, often mold-infested walls, the windows were usually modern and well-sealed (except for one that was not properly flashed, causing water to pour in during a storm), this means that the placement was about as energy inefficient as possible - without drafty windows, that placement just resulted in thermal loss through the shoddy insulation.

And that's before the landlords who cut every corner possible in maintenance, legal or not.

Quality construction would likely help with adoption of owner-occupied apartments but, that's something that we're unlikely to see without forcing it.