I once heard an anecdote that during the industrial revolution in the UK, "mills" were build out in the country where hydropower was available and the mill owners would also build homes to sell to workers. When recession hit and the mills downscaled, the workers were forced to sell at loss in order to relocate -- and the mill owners could resell the homes at profit when business picked back up.
Quickly Googling, this might be related to the Lancashire Cotton Famine [0].