Warren Buffett Slashes Price on Longtime Beach House

realtor.com

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is slashing the price of his California beach house to $7.9 million, after putting it on the market for $11 million in February 2017, according to a spokeswoman for the listing agent.

If the property sells for its new asking price, Mr. Buffett will still make an impressive return, having paid just $150,000 for the home in the early 1970s.

The 87-year-old Berkshire Hathaway chairman, the third richest man in the world according to Forbes magazine, spent holidays at the beach house. He said in an interview last year that he bought the house because his late first wife, Susan, loved it. Since she died in 2004, he hasn’t spent much time there, which prompted him to list the property.

He said the Laguna Beach area had changed dramatically since then, becoming more developed. The house was renovated several times through the years but not recently, said the spokeswoman for the listing agent. Mr. Buffett also purchased an adjacent house, which he called “the annex,” to make space for house guests, and connected the two homes with a staircase. The annex was sold in 2005.

Mr. Buffett recalled hiding out in the home’s master bedroom to write Berkshire Hathaway’s annual reports during Christmas holidays, and visiting Disneyland with his children.

The billionaire investor has slashed the price on his Laguna Beach home.

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The roughly 3,500-square-foot, three-level Laguna Beach home is in Emerald Bay, a high-end gated community with views of the beach. It has six bedrooms. Two of the bedrooms have their own separate entrances for guests. The house fits Mr. Buffett’s famously understated tastes, with gray carpeting and white laminate countertops.

The median home price for Orange County is $829,000, according to the California Association of Realtors data from July. While that is up 5.6% from July 2017, the number of total sales fell 1.4% during that same period. Also in July, the share of price cuts on active listings in Orange County was 22%, up from 18% the previous July, according to listings portal Realtor.com.

Neither Mr. Buffett nor his real estate agent, Bill Dolby of Villa Real Estate, were available for an interview.

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