I was a millionaire

I own property in Ireland. Thanks to the enormous bubble in house prices since the mid 1990s (see Figure 2 on page 4 of this paper) I became a paper millionaire for a few years. It was, of course, only a 'feel-good' fortune - I had no intention of ever selling my home, or even using it as collateral to fund an affluent lifestyle. Now, thanks to the inevitable reversal of the Irish property boom, I am no longer a millionaire. But so what? Since I wasn't ever going to sell the house, and since I continued to enjoy the same level of pleasure from it when it was expensive as when it was cheap, am I any worse off? The answer, clearly, is no. I was lucky to have the house when it was worth next to nothing, I was lucky to own it when it was worth a fortune, and I will be lucky to own it in the future, regardless of the state of the property market.