Lifestyle
Warren Buffett: A Billionaire’s Philanthropic Legacy – A Humble Home and a Wealth Used for Social Good
A modest three-bedroom, four-bathroom home on Omaha’s outskirts seems like a typical family home. The property’s history features Warren Buffett, the city’s most famous businessman.
The 91-year-old’s first solo investment company, Buffett Associates, was based in the English-Tudor mansion in 1956. The 3,400-square-foot Dundee home is listed for $799,000.
According to Alice Schroeder’s biography “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life,” Buffett and his late wife Susan rented the house for $175 a month, which is $1,821 now.
The Monens bought the house for $397,000. The Monens told the Wall Street Journal, which originally reported the listing, that they didn’t know about Buffett’s link when they were looking to buy the house.
The yard had a for sale sign when I went to Target. Nancy told the Journal, “We were the first ones to show up, and bought it right then and there.” They only learned of Buffett’s residency from the seller.
Buffett and his children Howard and Susan unexpectedly visited the property in 2019, requesting Nancy to show them the “little room” off the upstairs primary bedroom. Buffett launched his $125.1 billion company empire in one room.
Nancy told the Omaha World-Herald that the sunroom and the rest of the 103-year-old house they lived in six decades earlier “enchanted” them. Buffett and family took photos and reminisced. Before leaving, he scribbled “The birthplace of Buffett Associates May 1956” on the arched entrance off the modest room and signed it Warren E. Buffett.
A Buffett spokesperson informed the Journal that Buffett Associates investors contributed little over $100,000.
The listing agent, Jessica Dembinski of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Ambassador Real Estate, said housing demand remains high. Estimating “6,000 houses short of where the demand is currently.”
I love that Frederick A. Henninger, a famous Omaha architect, created the house. Dembinski told The Post it was erected in 1918. “Every second-floor bedroom has its own en-suite bathroom, which is unusual for this area of town and the age of the home.”
The home boasts three fireplaces, several outdoor gathering spaces, a screened-in porch, copper gutters, and some antique leaded windows.