Bluebean,
I live in a wooden house. Just completed in the last couple of months.
1) How long do they last? - in Ireland its hard to say. In Finland etc they last hundreds of years. You have to put specialist varnish on, but the theory is that they should last well over 100 years.
2) Resale value is difficult to guage. They are a somewhat particular taste - not everyone wants to live in one. Valuations seem to indicate that they have a regular type of resale value, but they might take a little longer to sell than the traditional style.
May I ask, have you planning? Because that quite often is the difficult part?
Munsterdude