– David Burt helped two of the protagonists of Michael Lewis’ book The Big Short bet against the US mortgage market in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis.
In doing so, Burt is joining the ranks of a small number of investors who have become worried that climate risk is underpriced in these securities, which are pools of home loans sold to investors. “I don’t think you need any new climate effects to come to draw these conclusions. The ones I see happening right now, I just need to get a little unlucky with them and I’m in trouble,” said Thomas Graff, head of fixed income at Brown Advisory. Graff abandoned a riskier type of RMBS after Hurricane Harvey hit Houston in 2017.Climate researchers and investors say a key culprit for the mispriced risk in the US mortgage market is outdated flood maps drawn by the federal government.
The federal government provides most flood insurance in the United States and the gaps mean the risk is not properly priced. The cost for an average policy in low-risk Green Bay, Wisconsin, for example, is three times that in Gulfport, Mississippi, a town devastated by Hurricane Katrina, according to Burt.