Adam Gant is a Canadian real estate investor based in Victoria who is passionate about improving access to housing for families in North America and around the world.
A thought leader who is consulted on topics ranging from residential real estate to retail, office, industrial, hospitality, land development and senior care, he has a depth of experience with both privately held real estate funds and public real estate investment vehicles.
His passion for making housing affordable and available extends to his philanthropic work with charities that seek to provide shelter to people and populations in need. Recently he shared his views on the housing crisis, along with practical solutions centered on his unique concept of “shared equity.”
Q: You’ve studied housing affordability extensively over the years. What have you learned about the magnitude of the problem and the possibility of finding real solutions?
Adam Gant: Your question perfectly frames the issue — research aimed at finding solutions. You need both. As a real estate investor, I don’t believe it’s sufficient to simply study the problem of housing affordability in a vacuum, as if it were an academic exercise. All my research has been focused on finding real-world solutions that can help real people, real families.
You don’t need to be an investor or economics professor to know that we’re in a housing crisis. Not just in North America, but in many countries around the world. Home prices have skyrocketed, and this was especially true following the pandemic. Today, there are so many homeowners who are millionaires, on paper. When I was growing up that would have been inconceivable, that you would end up spending a million dollars on a home. And not a mansion, but a modest home; in some exclusive markets, such as in California, that kind of money won’t even buy you a home with a decent yard.
But the housing crisis isn’t really about the inability of a middle-class or upper-middle-class couple to find a starter home. It’s fundamentally an issue of how do we ensure that we as a society provide housing for all — that no one needs to live on the street or under a bridge. How do we eliminate the need for tent cities? Because the tragedy of homelessness is not simply that people have nowhere to live; that’s just the symptom, what’s visible on the surface. Strangely, homelessness is a greater issue in cities with stronger economies, where unemployment is lower and home values are rising faster.
Q: By industry standards, you’ve offered some unconventional ideas to improve housing affordability and accessibility. How did you arrive at these solutions?
Adam Gant: For me, as with so many other professionals, academics and policy makers, the 2008-2009 financial crisis was a wake-up call. At the time, I resolved to study not just what had gone wrong in 2008, but also the underlying trends and systems that had led to the collapse of the housing market. I traveled extensively to analyze what works and what doesn’t work in countries around the world. I have connected with people in a variety of cities from Asia to Eastern Europe. I examined the interplay of housing policy, economics and culture, and took away some important lessons for North American communities. Not every international solution is transferable, but there is a wealth of ideas out there, and plenty of great models that can serve as the basis for our own solutions.
Q: Is this when you conceived the idea of “shared equity”?
Adam Gant: Yes, in my view shared equity is a way that millions of individuals and families can step onto that lower rung of home ownership. It dramatically improves affordability and expands accessibility.
Using this model of home ownership, a buyer starts with a small deposit or down payment, ideally one percent. The home buyer does not need to qualify for a mortgage upfront. The buyer is matched with a home where the monthly payment is comfortable for their family’s income level. The buyer shares in the equity growth in the home from the price appreciation. The exact percentage share of the home equity growth is dependent on the deposit size. Twenty percent or greater is a good starting range. The home buyer keeps their share of the equity even if they don’t end up buying the home.
Q: As intriguing as the concept of “shared equity” is, many find it even more fascinating that you decided to outline your ideas in a novel, a fictional work. How did that come about?
Adam Gant: It’s true. Although I’ve certainly written about “shared equity” from an academic perspective, I distilled the essence of the concept in the 2020 novel I co-wrote with Patricia Nicholson. The book is titled A House Shared, and it follows the story of a fictional family caught in the housing crisis, and the very personal challenges each family member is forced to confront.
At the start of the narrative, the main characters are living a secure life as professionals working in the security software industry. When misfortune strikes, their world begins to fall apart. Suddenly they find themselves fighting for survival, and fighting against market forces that make eviction seem inevitable, and homelessness a real possibility.
In the end, “shared equity” is the way out. This concept is woven through A House Shared, transporting the main characters beyond their circumstances into a life that illustrates the potential for saving countless other families from a similar financial fate.
It’s a fictional work, a novel, but in a sense it’s also a parable — one that conveys a message that dovetails perfectly with the challenges of our time.
