Why are high/rising property values considered a good thing? Increasing prices for housing are pretty much universally treated as positive in the news and in political discourse: newspapers run headlines like "Good news: Home values are up" and talk about "housing recoveries" when home prices go up and housing's "remaining depressed" (as opposed to "remaining moderate" or "remaining affordable") when they don't. (See here for several more examples.) But as with any other good, rising home prices are good for sellers and bad for buyers. I can't see any reason why everyone seems to treat the sellers' status as more important.

In fact, when people move between (owned) homes, they usually sell one house and buy another in quick succession. Any overall change in housing prices is a wash for them. Many people buy a home and then die before selling it - high housing prices don't seem to help them much. By the time people sell a home to move to a rental retirement home, they are usually receiving Social Security, Medicare, and a pension, and don't have a long life expectancy, so it seems to me that they would prioritize the money they receive from a sale less than a young first-time homebuyer would prioritize the amount that they lose. And of course, most people don't sell their homes very often, so higher prices don't seem to do them much good over the vast majority of their lifetimes. The most concrete impact I can think of that changes in the average homeowner's house price have on their day-to-day life is through their property taxes, in which case rising house prices are a bad thing for the homeowner.

(It's true that it's good for you if your neighbors' house prices rise, because then they pay higher property taxes which go to local services that you can take advantage of. But people seem to focus more on their own house's price then on their neighbors'.)

It seems to me that for anyone other than the tiny percentage of the population who are professional real estate agents, roughly speaking, rising housing prices are a bad thing until you buy your first house, and then after that are fairly neutral, at least until you're very old and about to move into a retirement home. Housing is a notoriously illiquid good, so an increase in the fraction of total wealth tied up in housing would seem to decrease overall economic flexibility. Am I missing an obvious reason why rising prices are a good thing for the economy as a whole?
Considered a good thing by whom?


Financial institutions and speculators: yes, since houses for them are just another asset. Higher asset prices is a key mechanism of profit making for financial institutions (capital gains). In the recent financial crisis house prices collapsed and people defaulted on their mortgage payments. Thus,  the fall in the value of houses repossessed by banks meant the return on financial assets associated to housing translated into massive losses for financial institutions and government agencies associated with the housing market like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the US.
Home owners: partly yes. A price increase is good, particularly if you have a mortgage to pay (so if you sell the house you can pay the loan back). Rising house prices are also good for pensioners, which main source of wealth is their house. Rising prices also give people the feeling they are richer (and hence spend more). Some argue that the positive appreciation of the media of rising house prices is partly due to the fact that newspapers are written and read mainly by older people, not by youngsters i.e. renters.
Renters: no, because rents are associated with house prices. If incomes are not growing at the pace of house prices, renters will be squeezed, to the benefit of landlords and homeowners. This is true in the UK (and in many other advanced economies, see here):





Central banks, and perhaps the overall economy and population: not necessarily, because rising house prices fueled by speculation and indebtedness (e.g. speculators and investors entering into the buy-to-let market) mean possibilities of a bubble bursting and a subsequent financial crisis. For example, in the UK, Mark Carney has expressed such concerns in the past.
Estate Agents: yes, as their business as intermediaries depends partly on fees from sales. People is more willing to sell when the market is on the up, fostering the property chain. If prices are falling, people prefer to wait instead of selling their house, breaking the property chain.