Warren Buffett Speaks on Housing

Warren Buffett speaks on Housing

 

BUFFETT: I would say the single-family homes are cheap now, too.

BECKY: You would?

BUFFETT: Yeah, single-family homes— but if I had a way of buying a couple hundred thousand single-family homes and had a way of managing— the management is enormous— is really the problem because they’re one by one. They’re not like apartment houses. So— but I would load up on them and I would— I would take mortgages out at very, very low rates. But if anybody is thinking about buying a home— five years ago they couldn’t buy them fast enough because they thought they were going to go up, and now they don’t buy them because they think they’re going to go down. And interest are far lower. It’s a way, in effect, to short the dollar because you can— you can take a 30-year mortgage and if it turns out your interest rate’s too high, next week you refinance lower. And if it turns out it’s too low, the other guy’s stuck with it for 30 years. So it’s a very attractive asset class now.

BECKY: If you are a young individual investor at home and you have your choice between buying your first home or investing in stocks, where would you tell someone is the better bet?

BUFFETT: Well, if I thought I was going to live— if I knew where I was going to want to live the next five or 10 years I would— I would buy a home and I’d finance it with a 30-year mortgage, and it’s a terrific deal. And if I— literally, if I was an investor that was a handy type, which I’m not, and I could buy a couple of them at distressed prices and find renters, I think that’s— and again take a 30-year mortgage, it’s a leveraged way of owning a very cheap asset now and I think that’s probably as an attractive an investment as you can make now. But I think equities are very attractive compared to anything else.

BECKY: But, obviously, they’ve come up quite a bit since you first were telling people you were buying them for your personal portfolio…

BUFFETT: Yeah.

BECKY: …with both hands essentially.

BUFFETT: Right. Yeah, well, I wrote that article— I said if you— if you wait till you see the first robin, spring’ll be over. And— well, spring is over, but we’re not in the dead of winter yet either. And stocks— we were— we were here three years ago and stocks have almost doubled exactly since we sat down three years ago. So they’re not as cheap as they were, but measured against the alternatives, would you rather have cash, would you rather have Treasury bonds, would you rather have, you know, you name it? I would rather own great businesses, and we own a lot of them through stocks and we own a lot of them outright, and I’d love to buy another one this afternoon.

BECKY: OK.  When you take a look at the housing market, you had told us last year when we sat down here that you thought last year could be the turning point, and you pointed out in your annual report this year that you were dead wrong on that call.

BUFFETT: Exactly.

BECKY: We didn’t see the improvement last year, but you do think that we’ll see it this year?

BUFFETT: Well, I think we’re likely to, but— and I’m somewhat chastened by the fact that I sat a year ago and said it would happen by now. But what I do know is that today there are more households being created than houses. Well, if that continues— and it will continue— eventually it gets in balance. And when it gets in balance— gets in balance in different geographies at different times. But when it gets in balance, we will need more than a million residential housing units annually. And when we’re building a billion units, supply and demand will come into balance. Got way out of balance five years ago and it’s taken us a long time to work it off. But it does get worked off, and households are now being formed. The first year after the recession in 2000— after it hit— in 2009, household formation went like this. I mean, that happens in recessions. But that’s changed. I mean, you know, we have four million people, roughly, hitting each age cohort every year, and we form households and they want to be in houses.