Warren Buffett's House (former)

Omaha investor who took over a struggling textile maker, Berkshire Hathaway, in 1965 and built it into one of America’s biggest companies. His yearly letter to shareholders is among the most quoted writing in finance.

The Orange County Business Journal dates the house to 1936 and says it was renovated several times over the years. It sits in a gated seaside enclave next to Laguna Beach.

Buffett bought it in 1971 at the urging of his first wife, Susan, according to Bloomberg. The same report says he worked on his annual letter to Berkshire shareholders here over Christmas breaks.

He has said the family spent summers and Christmases at the beach, and he came less often after Susan died in 2004. In 2017, at 86, he put the house up for sale.

He also bought the neighboring house. “That became kind of the annex,” he said, and it held overflow guests until he sold it in 2005.

The sale closed in 2018, 47 years after he bought. A University of Maryland finance professor worked out his return on the house at 8.7% a year, compounded.

The next owners spent 3 years restoring it, finishing in October 2021, and joined its 2 separate buildings with a breezeway. Out went the Buffett-era rough stucco, aluminum railings, and commercial-grade carpet, per Remodelista.