[matt4077]

There's a certain network effect, at least for some people: you can just take your business on the road and work in a different city every week.

With the name recognition they're getting, they may also get really good deals on office space: I've personally witnessed a co-working space gentrifying a whole city block. The whole block was also owned by the same investor, who apparently gave them a 50% rebate on a ten-year contract. She has easily gotten a 10x ROI on it, since rents in the rest of the buildings tripled within two years.

[nora4]

That's a great point. Hip, cool, modern entrepreneur types can easily work as agents of gentrification which as you pointed out can lead to massive increase in wealth for nearby properties owners (at the expense of previous occupants/patrons, some will argue).

[opencl]

The decreased wealth of occupants is the entire source of the landlord's increased wealth when rent increases, are there really people who will argue that isn't the case?

[nora4]

I guess purely logically, you are right. But I would be against the underlying theme behind that general type of thinking. If you take that line of thought and extrapolate it, it starts getting close to a socialistic/anti-economic progress point of view.