A modest home with 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms on the outskirts of downtown Omaha, Neb., Seems like just your average family home. But the story behind the property involves the city’s most famous man, business mogul Warren Buffett.
The English-Tudor House served as the 91-year-old’s temporary office for one of his first solo investment funds, Buffett Associates, back in 1956. Nearly seven decades later, the more than 3,400-square-foot home was located in the upscale Dundee neighborhood. , hits the market for $ 799,000.
Buffett and his then-wife, the late Susan Buffett, rented the home for just $ 175 a month (equivalent to $ 1,821 today), according to the biography “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life,” by Alice Schroeder.
James and Nancy Monen bought the house in 2005 for $ 397,000. When they sought to buy the house, they had no idea about Buffett’s connection, Monens told the Wall Street Journal, which was the first to report on the upcoming IPO.
“One day I was going to Target, and there was a sign for sale in the yard. We were the first to show up and buy it right there and then, ”Nancy told the Journal, adding that they only found out about Buffett’s previous stay from the seller during the process of buying the home.
In 2019, Buffett, along with two of his children, Peter and Susan Alice, stopped by the home unexpectedly and asked Nancy if they could see the “small room” next to the main bedroom upstairs. It was the space itself where Buffett started his business ventures that eventually made him the money-making man worth $ 125.1 billion today.
They were “enchanted” by the sunroom along with the rest of the 103-year-old house they had lived in six decades ago, according to an interview Nancy did with the local newspaper, the Omaha World-Herald. Buffett and his family took pictures and became nostalgic during their visit. Before leaving, he wrote “The Birthplace of Buffett Associates May 1956,” on the arched room door next to the small room, and signed his name Warren E. Buffett.
At the time, investors in Buffett Associates were pitching a total of just over $ 100,000 in total, a Buffett representative told the Journal.
Since the Monens have owned the house, they have rented the house out to visitors attending Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders’ meeting, nicknamed “The Woodstock of Capitalism.”
Jessica Dembinski of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Ambassador Real Estate, which has the listing, revealed that the demand for housing is still very high. Specifically estimated that they were around “6,000 houses below where demand is currently.”
And with all the features of Buffett’s one-time home and its tasty history, the property is expected to be snapped up quickly.
“One of my favorite facts about the house is that it was designed by the famous Omaha architect, Frederick A. Henninger. It was built in 1918, “Dembinski told The Post. “Every single bedroom on the second floor has its own en-suite bathroom, something completely out of the ordinary for this area of the city and the age of the home.”
“The home also has three fireplaces, several outdoor entertaining spaces, including a screened porch, copper gutters and several of the original leaded windows.”
The Buffett family lived in the home for two years before paying only $ 31,500 to buy another Omaha house just a two-minute drive away, or about $ 313,000 today. Buffett still lives in the rather modest five-bedroom, three-bathroom home today with his second wife, Astrid Menks.
Records show that he updated and renovated his current home in 1989.