It truly feels like the end of an era as Billionaire Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha as he is famously referred to, prepares to step down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway leaving behind the current vice president Greg Abel to take over the reins. In his annual letter, which is also his final one as CEO, he wrote that he was, “going quiet” ending the iconic six-decade run of yearly missives.
The 95-year-old is not only one of the richest men in the world with a net worth of $149.2 billion according to Forbes, but also one of the most profound and successful investors of all time. He built an empire through Berkshire Hathaway which owns notable companies like Duracell, Dairy Queen, Geico, Fruit of the loom and also has key holdings in companies like Apple, American Express, Coca Cola, Bank of America and Chevron among several others.
Despite all this wealth however, his real estate portfolio has remained surprisingly modest. The American billionaire is notoriously frugal, preferring stock market investments over real estate and still lives in his long-time Omaha abode which is shockingly humble in comparison to the billionaire standards set by his colleagues. Today, let us take a look at Warren Buffet’s properties which he has accumulated over the course of his incredibly long career.
Inside the sparse real estate portfolio of the Oracle of Omaha
The first piece of property that Warren Buffett ever purchased was a 40 acre farm in Nebraska in the year 1944 according to Alice Schroeder’s 2008 biography, The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life. As a child, Buffet was as entrepreneurial as he is today at 95, making his first earning at the age of 6 selling sticks of gum. At 13, when his family moved to Washington DC, he began working as a paperboy delivering copies of the Washington Post in his neighbourhood and by 15, he had singlehandedly earned $2,000 – enough to make his very first real estate purchase.
This opened up new possibilities for a young Warren Buffet, who went on to purchase the famous Omaha residence in 1958 at the age of 28 – a piece of property which has remained his primary home till the present day. Purchased for $31,500 in his hometown, today the equivalent of that sum would be $329,505 according to Architectural Digest. It was built in 1921 and has an area of 6,570 square feet featuring 5 bedrooms along with two and half bathrooms; this is the home where Buffet and his then wife Susan raised all three of their children and it clearly is of immense sentimental value to the billionaire. In the annual letter to shareholders in 2010, he called the property the third-best investment he’d ever made.
Another notable property that Buffet purchased but no longer owns is the Laguna Beach vacation home in California. This was the only other real estate purchase he made apart from his Omaha residence and the reason for the purchase was extremely sweet: He’d only bought the house because his wife Susan liked it according to an interview he gave to Wall Street Journal.
The property purchased in 1971, cost the couple $150,000 and was built in a contemporary style. According to AD, it featured high sculpted ceilings with recessed lighting that gave the home a “museum-like feel”. It also included 6 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms, with two of the bedrooms having private entrances and boasted a large fireplace along with multiple beach-facing decks. As the vacation home was located inside a private gated community, it could also boast amenities like multiple tennis courts, a swimming pool, and beach volleyball courts. Buffet even purchased a home next to it as extra space for his guests. Tragically, after his wife passed away in 2004, he decided to sell the property. It fetched a price of $7.9 million in 2018 according to AD.
Beyond luxury properties: Warren Buffet’s affinity for farmland
Additionally, Warren Buffet has purchased multiple plots of land both in the US and abroad. He has research farms in locations like South Africa and the US state of Arizona with each being enormous plots of farmland. He also owns a 400 acre farm in Omaha which is located almost 81 km away north from the FDIC and it cost him $280,000 in 1986.
Despite not knowing anything about farming, his business savvy mind predicted that the returns from the farm would increase over time as productivity and the cost of crops rose. In one of the annual Berkshire Hathaway letters he wrote that “Both expectations proved out.” Warren Buffet’s real estate portfolio speaks volumes about his values and roots: lots of farm land bringing back enormous returns and a cosy family home which has been maintained till date makes him a true son of the soil; a Midwesterner in the truest sense of the term. Though his professional career has approached twilight, his way of living and thinking will be aspirational for generations to come.
