"I believe your strengths are your roadmap and a smile on your face is the best measure of success."
Jim Farris, the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Offer of Mosser Capital. Mosser Capital provides institutional and high-net-worth investors the ability to partner with Mosser Companies, a leader with more than 65 years of experience in urban workforce housing communities in West Coast gateway markets.
With nearly two decades of experience in real estate investment, finance, and property operations, Jim leads all facets of Mosser’s fully integrated real estate investment management business as well as the broader strategic development and leadership of the firm.
Jim earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from Santa Clara University and a dual Masters of Business Administration degree from Columbia Business School and the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and is an IREI Springboard Leader Alumni, an iREOC Board of Governors member, and a UC Berkeley Fisher Center Advisory board member
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Jim Farris: Hi, I am Jim Farris, the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Offer of Mosser Capital. Mosser Capital provides institutional and high-net-worth investors the ability to partner with Mosser Companies, a leader with more than 65 years of experience in urban workforce housing communities in West Coast gateway markets. Mosser owns and operates more than 4,000 apartments and more than 100 ground-floor retail properties and spaces in historic and culturally vibrant properties and neighborhoods throughout San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles.
Unlike other real estate owner operators, Mosser is fully vertically integrated and diversely owned business with more than 85 percent of its employees self-identifying as a minority. From this background, Mosser has a profound commitment to diversity and local community benefit that is at the core of company culture. Mosser is well known for driving improvements in the neighborhoods where they do business and contributing to the economic and cultural vitality of the community.
With nearly two decades of experience in real estate investment, finance, and property operations, I lead all facets of Mosser’s fully integrated real estate investment management business as well as the broader strategic development and leadership of the firm.
2021 and 2022 threw a lot of curve balls into business on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past couple years, how can businesses thrive in 2023? What lessons have you learned?
Jim Farris: Businesses that came out of the pandemic and are still thriving in 2022 are more flexible, closer to their stakeholders, know what it takes to pivot and be creative and strong survivors.
In our urban workforce housing space in California, COVID gave us a chance to slow down our investment pace and to focus on improving many of our operating processes in order to drive greater transparency throughout the organization. The side effect of being present and putting people first, was that we also had deep knowledge of what was happening with our residents—specific individuals and families–and our properties—giving Mosser greater control and know how to best support them immediately from the onset of COVID. As COVID went on we improved both our internal and external reporting capabilities and were able to get more insight into our properties even when we couldn’t always be there physically.
We have adapted our investment thesis to spread out further in the urban environment and to continue to attract new residents who want to be close to the urban employment and transportation centers, which is core to our long-term investment thesis, and give current Mosser residents new choices of apartments to move into and stay in the Mosser network as their needs change.
Our long-term prediction is that cities like San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles will continue to make
the swing back and adapt to how people want to live and work. There are some fundamentals of workforce housing that make investment—especially in the post-COVID era in California—a really good choice. And there’s nothing like California weather and lifestyle to draw residents.
In addition, Mosser is monitoring the continued development and growth of cities such as Seattle, Portland, Denver, Salt Lake City, and Austin as areas for potential expansion. While we believe California is the best investment opportunity today, we are monitoring markets where valuations may normalize, and fundamentals remain strong.
We learned that having deep community roots as a multifamily investor and operator has a lot to do with our success and makes a significant difference to our stakeholders. Our connections in the community enabled us to obtain items that were in short supply, like toilet paper, medical supplies, and hand sanitizers, for our residents who couldn’t get those items for themselves.
The pandemic seems to keep on disrupting the economy, what should businesses focus on in 2023? What advice would you share?
Jim Farris: Businesses must stay focused on strategic opportunism, a concept I read about in the Harvard Business Review, where CEOs stay focused on long-term goals while remaining flexible enough to solve the day’s problems and recognize the new opportunities that are right in front of them. It’s a balance we’re mastering one day at a time, successfully bridging short-term opportunities with the long-term direction.
In addition, we’ve found staying connected to the needs of our stakeholders continues to be important, as it provides us with the opportunity to ensure alignment of interests.
For example, the issue of affordable housing continues to be an important issue in California. The more aligned we are with our investors, the better we can deliver measurable community and social impact through housing improvements, revitalization of neighborhoods, working with local organizations that push towards bettering the community and supporting local business growth in these neighborhoods that otherwise are under-improved and neglected by institutional capital.
How has the pandemic changed your industry and how have you adapted?
Jim Farris: In the past two and a half years during the pandemic, we have learned so much.
Previously unimaginable, the beginning of the pandemic came and created a title wave of unemployment that hit our workforce resident community particularly hard. For many who were working, their homes—and often, their dining room tables–became their new place of work. For them, the return to in-person work started trickling back again this year. During the pandemic, up to 30 percent of our workforce renters were unable to pay rent.
Renters who retained their jobs and stayed in west coast urban centers used it as an opportunity to move up into bigger apartments in better neighborhoods. We had apartments for them and invested in more, so we now have a bigger breadth to offer in terms of both smaller and larger apartments, in the city center or just outside of it.
We also doubled down on cleaning, maintenance, and resident support. Maintenance workers and property managers, among others, became front-line and essential workers during the pandemic. We were close to our residents and had a clear idea of what was going on in the buildings and even with individual residents during the pandemic. Mosser saw it as a time for care and dedication, making certain residents were safe, comfortable and had what they needed. Mosser kept every one of its essential employees fully scheduled, busy tending to maintenance needs, property improvements, and more.
Now that San Francisco is recovering, and renters are finding their way back into west coast urban centers, it is making many investors question—is now the time to invest in urban workforce housing in California or continue to invest elsewhere? In addition to the effect of re-opening, as interest rates have climbed and uncertainty in the market has increased during 2022, investors are asking themselves is it time to go back to investing in gateway markets?
Based on the lessons we have learned during the pandemic and what we see during capital markets cycles, we believe timing is exactly right to re-invest in the gateway markets of California. There is tremendous opportunity here particularly in the residential sector and we are tapped into it.
What advice do you wish you received when the pandemic started and what do you intend on improving in 2023?
Jim Farris: The pandemic was unexpected and unprecedented. The whole world was forced into a situation that brought the world economy into a tailspin. I wish we had been advised about just how difficult it was going to be for some of our residents who were laid off without savings or drained their savings accounts to get by and encountered insecurity that made it impossible to cover their rents.
Everyday taught us a new lesson about human kindness, the enduring survival instinct and power of community. Additionally I wish we knew just how long it would take to come out of this as it has been substantially longer then what most of us thought during the early stages in 2020.
In the meantime, we continued to pursue our long-term goals, buckled down to get through this period, and continued to adapt and plan for the future—all ow which continues in 2023.
We launched a new investment fund and have increased our overall commitment to invest in urban workforce in California to the tune of $300m of additional equity over the next 2 years. In addition to gearing up for a substantial increase in acquisitions in 2023 & 2024 we have also been focused on:
- Influencing improvements in policy to make naturally occurring affordable housing more available
- Re-investing in urban renewal in many forms
- Shaping benchmarks and how to measure social impact
- Partnering and collaborating with more advocacy groups to support diversity, education, and equity in housing in the urban communities we invest in
Online business surged higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for 2023?
Jim Farris: We are expecting the hybrid model of work in 2023 and beyond in some way shape or form. We are seeing an influx of people moving back into the city, but also know that remote work will continue. Thus the focus on proximity to the office is not as close as it was in the past, but it will still need to be close.
What we have focused on in addition to relative proximity is investing in areas where people want to live regardless of where the physical office location is. We believe this is a thesis that will withstand shifts in where people will work and be sustainable over the long run as we focus on 24/7 locations that offer unique amenities that other locations are not able to provide.
Renter preferences such as mild weather, being near the coast, amenities, proximity to high paying jobs, networking and social gathering opportunities, openness and inclusiveness of culture, are all critical to consider when we think about locations where we want to invest in the future.
The majority of executives use stories to persuade and communicate in the workplace. Can you share with our readers examples of how you implement that in your business to communicate effectively with your team?
Jim Farris: Our business is full of stories—we have an incredibly rich history.
Storytelling is a powerful tool we use to give our team members a concrete understanding of what we do and its impact. The stories are educational and motivating.
It is easy to tell someone who Mosser is—but our stories drive home the experience of who we are and provide an opportunity for us to highlight Mosser and share the character of the company through our lens. Stories also allow us to recognize our own accomplishments and learn from past mistakes by sharing anecdotes about what works and what does not. Finally, Mosser stories demonstrate who we are to stakeholders, demonstrate our values and character, and connect us with how to best approach different situations that may arise because we’ve likely been there before.
Our stories reveal the heart of the company. For example, on the operations side, we really know our residents. Some of the older and disabled among our residents were afraid of leaving home in the early days during the pandemic, because of the uncertainty the virus created. Our team rallied together getting hard to come by supplies like toilet paper, hand-sanitizer, and even food items, and delivered them to residents in need. None of this was in a job description, but the entire team, from management to maintenance had their eye on the wellness of Mosser residents. It was a given they were top priority.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as the real challenge right now?
Jim Farris: Part of our challenge currently is overcoming the bias that investing from a social impact lens necessitates a reduction in expected returns. Fighting the perception that there is a social impact discount rather than a social impact premium is one of our largest challenges. The triple bottom line is achievable, and it is achievable in the work force and affordable housing sectors of real estate.
In 2023, what are you most interested in learning about? Crypto, NFTs, online marketing, or any other skill sets? Please share your motivations.
Jim Farris: I have been very interested in learning about all new and evolving technology that can assist in the real estate investing space. COVID created a new reality where top tier investors and operators recognize that our use of technology offers them a significant competitive advantage—now they see this as a must have versus a nice to have.
To attract available capital and stay ahead of competitors in a business where every investment dollar counts – technology is the clear path towards future success. Technology helps us make smarter decisions based on data and work more efficiently and productively, automating key tasks.
I am interested in continuing to build the Mosser investment platform into a model for the entire industry. We have 65+ years of data that powers our models and the experience to match. My goal is to keep learning and improving as technology improves and to get more involved in the technology investing side of the real estate business as well.
A record 4.4 million Americans left their jobs in September in 2021, accelerating a trend that has become known as the Great Resignation. 47% of people plan to leave their job during 2022. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued and misunderstood in the workplace. Do you think leaders see the data and think “that’s not me – I’m not that boss they don’t want to work for? What changes do you think need to happen?
Jim Farris: Of course, the idea of losing any valuable team members is unappealing and leaders naturally want to think it is not their fault. We work hard to keep good employees and it shows in our workforce loyalty and longevity at the company, with many employees staying for decades.
Prior to the great resignation, when COVID hit, we did everything in our power to keep all our team members employed and taken care of during a time of major layoffs and financial hardship.
We continue to show that same support to our team members today and will continue to do so moving forward. Mosser has a long history of employee development and creating a net positive social footprint into all the communities it serves. This loyalty to our communities, employees, and to our residents has inspired our employees and created reciprocal loyalty which we continue to benefit from.
Do we get some things wrong? Probably, everyone does. But our goal for all employees is to have them learn and grow as people in their careers and skills, making them more valuable to us but also making them more valuable to others. We feel good about improving the quality of lives of those that choose to work with Mosser and we place a great deal of value on continuity and skill development at Mosser.
We have our own phrase that describes this attitude which is “Mosser University” or “Mosser U” which describes our cross-training programs we have developed in the building trades over the years. Neveo Mosser, the CEO of Mosser companies has worked in every job in the business starting out as a janitor and improved his skills and value from there. Having an inclusionary workforce is deeply ingrained in our culture.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Jim Farris: To improve my public speaking skills and be able to inspire more people to invest and operate with a triple bottom line approach. My goal would be to scale the impact and influence that I could have in this social impact arena.
What does “success” in 2023 mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Jim Farris: Success is continuing to build the right team that can execute our vision and that is able to grow our vision broader and deeper then we as leaders can articulate ourselves.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Jim Farris for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Jim Farris or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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