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Warren Buffett Not the easy kind. But in 2012, during a CNBC interview, he explained exactly how someone with a wrench — and a little nerve — could make serious money in real estate.
“I would say that even single-family homes are affordable,” he said. “If I had a way to buy two million single-family homes and manage them — management is huge — the problem is really because they’re one-on-one. They’re not like apartment homes. But I’ll load them up, and I’ll take out mortgages at much, much lower rates.”
That was not just a casual suggestion. Buffett was spelling out a playbook: Use low-interest 30-year fixed-rate loans, buy income-producing assets, and let inflation work in your favor.
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“If I was an investor who was an easy type, which I’m not, and I could buy a couple of them at a ridiculous price and find people to rent them … again, take out a 30-year mortgage … it’s a profitable way to own a very cheap property right now.”
Then came the line that summed it all up: “It’s a way, really, to short the dollar.”
At the time, the median home price in the US was over $150,000. Mortgage rates were less than 4%. And the market was still recovering from the housing crash, filled with foreclosures and fear.
Buffett was asked what advice he would give to young investors choosing between buying their first home or investing in stocks.
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“If I knew where I wanted to live in the next 5 or 10 years, I would buy a house and I would finance it with a 30-year mortgage,” he said. “And it’s a terrible deal.”
Today in 2026, mortgage rates are very high. Home prices have risen to more than $400,000. The outrageous deals Buffett mentioned are hard to find, and for most buyers, the “cheap property” moment is long gone.
But the basic principle has not changed.
Buffett wasn’t asking people to flip houses. He was highlighting how to use fixed-rate leverage to buy productive, income-producing assets—assets that don’t sit there, but pay you monthly as the actual cost of your loan shrinks over time.
Also See: This Jeff Bezos-Backed Startup Will Let You Become a landlord in just 10 minutes, with a minimum investment of as little as $100.
For those who want to follow the logic without turning into full-time landlords, platforms like Arrived make it easy to invest in rental homes — minus the toolbox. For just $100 you can buy fractional shares of real estate and handle everything Buffett flags as a dealbreaker: management. That means you’re not flushing the toilet in the middle of the night, chasing rent checks, or insisting that your tenants take out the trash.
Buffett didn’t pick up the hammer. He didn’t need to. But the strategy he described in 2012 still works. Own the property. Fix the debt. Let time and inflation do the rest.
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The article Billionaire Warren Buffett Says If He Was a Handy Guy, He’d Buy Distressed Homes with 30-Year Mortgages and Rent Them Out to ‘Short the Dollar’ originally appeared on Benzinga.com.
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