[mywittyname]

There are dozens of us!

I think most of this comes down to the fact that Americans generally had little savings outside of their home equity. This only became relevant in the 90-00s when home equity loans/LoCs took off and were widely available to almost anyone. Suddenly, it mattered how much equity you had in your home because you could spend it.

There's another group of people that look at their parents' home and realize that it has doubled in value since the early 90s. But these people usually don't account for interest, tax, and maintenance payments over those 20 years.

[svachalek]

Simple inflation too, the value of a dollar in 1990 was twice as much as now. But for most owners, inflation works in your favor since it negates some of the mortgage interest.

[arcticbull]

Or interest tax deductions, property tax deductions and the fact any renovations you do can be used to raise your cost basis to offset some of those gains. Also your mortgage inflates away over time too.