If Seattle implements rent control, it will be the mother of all property investment opportunities as it turns into SF 2.0 over the next decade. Long-term renters will dance in the streets alongside property owners and everyone else will be priced out forever.
Sorry for hijacking the topic a bit, but I don't think it will be Seattle. And it's already too late for it to be Boston. I'd love for it to be Portland, but Portland's politics make that impractical. You need a hard to copy magical mix of social liberalism mixed with a healthy subpopulation of corporate whoredom to recreate Silicon Valley IMO.
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Rent-control-proposed-for...
Even Paul Krugman thinks rent control is bollocks. Of course, people only listen to economists when they agree with them, but I digress.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent-...
Sorry for hijacking the topic a bit, but I don't think it will be Seattle. And it's already too late for it to be Boston. I'd love for it to be Portland, but Portland's politics make that impractical. You need a hard to copy magical mix of social liberalism mixed with a healthy subpopulation of corporate whoredom to recreate Silicon Valley IMO.