I'd argue even if absolutely all housing went up 5% in value, everyone is still at least a little richer (albeit not effectively 5% richer and mostly on paper s

I'd argue even if absolutely all housing went up 5% in value, everyone is still at least a little richer (albeit not effectively 5% richer and mostly on paper still). Most people buy a house with a down payment. A conventional down payment is 20%. If you bought a house for $100,000 (with $20k down) and it's now worth $105,000. You can now sell the house, and put $25k down on another house, which means you can now qualify for a $125,000 house. For simplicity I'm ignoring principal that had been paid down on the first mortgage and transactional costs.