It's one of the only assets available to "normal people" that is highly leveraged (yet also protected in many ways).

So that 200-something-thousand-dollar increase is on a downpayment that may have originally just been 200K or less.

Short-term "stepping up" through a series of properties can be much more wealth-building than, say, renting + investing in stocks. The longer you stay in one place the less advantageous the returns are over just putting the down payment in the market, but then having a concrete asset has its own benefits even then.