An “Extreme” Solution to Pressing Housing Questions
Toni Moss & AmeriCatalyst Present the 2024 Climate & Housing Conference
Toni Moss, CEO of AmeriCatalyst LLC, never intended to produce conferences. An expert on global mortgage markets, Moss spent much of the 1990s in Europe working as the Director of Corporate Development for Bouwfonds, a division of the Dutch government that was created to rebuild Holland after World War II. Moss’s background in corporate intelligence, scenario planning and due diligence served her well in this position and, during her experiences across 23 countries during that time, she saw how mortgage markets were heading toward trouble by the early 2000s and tried to do something about it.
In 2002, she launched the annual Eurocatalyst (now AmeriCatalyst) conference to discuss the impact of globalization on the mortgage and real estate industries. Last held in 2020, this year AmeriCatalyst is coming back with a new event, AmeriCatalyst’s “GOING TO EXTREMES: The Climate, Housing, and Finance Leadership Summit.”
REI INK sat down with Moss to discuss the conference, climate change, real estate, and the surprising ways they all fit together.
There are a lot of conferences in the real estate space. What makes AmeriCatalyst conferences unique?
My focus is on the actual purpose of the event and not its profit, and, as a result, these events are known for being quite intellectually challenging and unconventional.
I apply some “quirky” things to the format to make the event valuable from a business perspective, fun from a personal perspective, and entirely unique to the industry. The seating is cabaret-style, to build community. I use music to editorialize each session, which is often very funny. I use clever (and snarky) session titles with double entendres and everyone knows to read between the lines of my programs because the more they look, the more there is to see.
I keep these events to a smaller audience of invite-only attendees numbering no more than 300 because I want the smartest minds in the room together. Each year, every session is a chapter in the bigger “story” of the conference so that by the end of the event, you have a very clear view of the “big picture” issues that are driving the market and can anticipate what will happen next.
By the way, this will be the first year in our history that an AmeriCatalyst event has ever been open to media coverage.
What are examples of past themes at your events?
In 2010, I added an entire day onto the main AmeriCatalyst event and called it “Renting, the Future.” The day was focused on the emergence of the unknown and amorphous collection of individuals and companies buying single family homes and renting them out.
Single-family rental (SFR) was not even a defined industry sector at the time because most people thought that it was a short-term trade on house price appreciation and not a long-term trend. But in calling it “Renting, the Future” I was making an editorial statement that renting literally is the future because homeownership would increasingly become out of the reach of the average American – and it certainly has.
In 2011, the event was themed “Convergence” in reference to the convergence of the housing-finance side of the industry and the real estate sector. I predicted real estate agencies would become mortgage lenders due, in large part, to the emergence of Single Family Rental (SFR). I also wanted to show the similarities between the mortgage industry and SFR on the servicing and property management side. In 2013, I themed the event “Rorschach” because I noticed an interesting trend of people dismissing conventional facts and paying more attention to what they wanted to see rather than what really was.
In retrospect, other than 2002, which was the earliest event on record naming the crisis of 2007/2008, perhaps the most profound theme was our last event in 2020. It was themed “ENTROPY: Surviving the New Abnormal”. In early February of 2020, the market was doing quite well; I came along and called its condition an advanced state of entropy. At that time, I wrote, “The housing industry suffers from a pathologically short attention span. We predict that almost 40% of today’s companies in the housing ecosystem will not survive over the next five years”. At the time I had written that, the party was going strong. Covid hit three days later.
This year’s event is titled, “Going to Extremes.” How did you decide on that?
The ravages of extreme climate now impact every single region of the US, accelerating the frequency and severity of catastrophic weather events and leading to a very volatile and unpredictable future. Belief in climate change is inconsequential at this point; extreme climate is here and now — not five or ten years away — and it is affecting practical elements of our lives (and portfolios). We must analyze the issue and prepare for how it will change our lives and our investments in the near future.
Think about this for a minute: we live in a world where the greatest change is the pace of change. We expect social, political, and technological change, but none of us grew up anticipating environmental change. Our climate is changing far faster than at any other time in human history, and these changes are permanent. Yet, we have built our entire housing and finance infrastructure under the assumption that the climate is stable. Contrast that against a property and casualty insurance policy, which is an annual product. See the duration mismatch?
By assuming stability in the future, we have embedded all of our greatest vulnerabilities into the very foundation of the housing ecosphere. Now, we’re seeing insurance companies pull out of Florida, California and Louisiana; some are even considering leaving Texas due to hail damage and flooding. The entire housing-finance system is built upon insurance as the greatest risk-transfer mechanism, but we can no longer count on that. This is the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Are we headed toward an uninsurable future? This event is asking, “Now what? We know it is only going to get worse. We need to talk about it, and prepare for it.” There is no excuse for an investor to not be prepared.
What will attendees learn?
They will find out how much time they’ve got to divest from certain areas, and where to invest now. They will learn how the entire industry works and interacts, and gain valuable ideas that they have not ever considered. And they will learn that their greatest opportunity right now is in climate adaptation. Rather than continue to be plagued by this notion that investors are killing the housing market for first-time homebuyers and destroying the American dream, investors have a chance to become heroes by adapting the housing stock to withstand climate change. According to a 2022 Bank of America report, analysts estimate that the climate-adaptation market could be worth $2 trillion a year within the next five years. In terms of home improvement, recent studies show that for every $1 spent on climate adaptation and resilience, homeowners and insurers can save up to $13 in future losses. There’s your opportunity.
Who is participating?
It is an interactive and collaborative event in which all sessions are moderated by me and Rick Sharga, of CJ Patrick Company. We will have 300 senior and CEO-level representatives from all aspects of our industry, including the IMF, the White House, the Federal Reserve, U.S. Treasury, HUD, the FHFA, the FHA, the VA, Ginnie Mae, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, institutional investors, private investors, private equity firms, insurance companies, investment banks, banks, mortgage originators and servicers, homebuilders, SFR Operators and REITs, the top data and analytics firms, economists, and the world’s leading climatologists.
I’m extremely proud of the executives who are coming because they truly “get” it; they understand the need to be proactive and begin shaping policies now rather than get caught flat-footed as the next crisis hits.
How do I get an invitation?
Write to me and convince me why you should be invited. Or come as a guest of one of our sponsors.
SIDEBAR
GOING TO EXTREMES
The Climate, Housing, and Finance Leadership Summit
Presented by Toni Moss & AmeriCatalyst
April 18-19, 2024
Gaylord National Harbor Resort & Conference Center // Washington, D.C.
Learn more and request an invitation at AmeriCatalyst.com.
