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Warren Buffett famously still lives in the same house he bought decades ago — a modest Omaha home he purchased in 1958 for $31,500.
Today, it’s worth around $1.4 million, but Buffett’s attachment to the home isn’t about its appreciation. It’s about the decision he made long before buying it — and the way he handled the first big financial choice of his marriage.
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At a time when interest rates, home prices, and the basic cost of living feel higher than ever, Buffett’s old advice about homeownership hits harder than it did in 1998, when a young shareholder stood up at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting and asked a question that had nothing to do with stocks.
“I’m still quite young, I don’t have a house yet, and I’m thinking about buying a house someday soon,” the audience member said. “In order to do that, I’m going to have to put a down payment, which means I might have to sell my shares.”
What he wanted to know was simple: When is the right time to buy a house? And how much should you risk or sacrifice to get there?
Buffett didn’t pull out a textbook answer. Instead, he shared a story from the early days of his marriage.
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He and his wife, Susie, started out with about $10,000 — not much to build an empire. So Buffett gave her a choice: spend everything on a house immediately, or delay and use the money to invest.
“There’s two choices, it’s up to you,” Buffett said he told her. “We can either buy a house, which will use up all my capital and clean me out, and it’ll be like a carpenter who’s had his tools taken away from him. Or you can let me work on this and someday, who knows, maybe I’ll even buy a little bit larger house than would otherwise be the case.”
Susie agreed to wait. They didn’t buy a home until 1956, four years into their marriage — and even then, Buffett only pulled the trigger when the down payment was around 10% of his net worth, not the entire pot.
