If anyone clicked on the Wikipedia link to Warren Buffett's profile they would have seen the following ..

"He lives in the same house in the central Dundee neighborhood of Omaha that he bought in 1958 for $31,500, today valued at around $700,000."

At first thought you must be thinking, wow what a great investment he made turning $31,500 into $700,000. Think again because unless my compounding interest calculator is lying to me that works out to be just 6.4% per year (without including any tax benefits he might have gained or expenses he might have incurred for insurance, repairs and upkeep - assume they balance each other). This is also the same house, not one that is two or three times larger than the 1958 version so the statistics aren't lying to us either. It is also worth noting that the price he paid for this house was less than three times his annual salary at the time - a lesson we could all learn from.

While the return he made on this house is nothing to sneeze at in a time when a CD might only yield 3.5%, put in the context of Buffett's investment returns this number is quite small. According to the Wikipedia timeline, in 1965 he started buying shares of Berkshire Hathaway at $14.86 each and by the end of the year had taken over the company that he still runs today. Just checking Yahoo! Finance, today those shares go for $116,500 each, an annualized increase of 23.2% (per year for 43 years)! Check my math though my old compound interest calculator is a little rusty these days. Now you might say, if only he would have invested that money he spent on the house. Well not really because being the wise man that he is Mr. Buffett bought the house as a place to live first and foremost and not as an investment - another lesson we could all learn from.

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