Berkshire Hathaway weekend: Shareholders make time to glimpse Warren Buffett’s Omaha home

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - For many visiting Omaha this weekend, Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders’ meeting has turned the city into a bit of a pilgrimage.

The orange cones are in place, the trees are in bloom, and privacy fences are up.

You can’t get a real good look at Warren Buffett’s home, but still they come, by the busloads — really, busloads — of Buffett fans rolling in to get a look at where the Oracle of Omaha resides. Others came by cab or private car — and they came from around the country and world.

Johan Van Overtveldt is from Belgium and a member of the European Parliament. He says Buffett is popular in Europe.

“Indirectly because the way in which he moves with his investments, he’s always followed also in Europe,” he said. “Also in that way, he gives indications of where he thinks the economy is going and where the big opportunities are. So in that sense, he’s certainly somebody who signals what is relevant for economic policy.”

There are other groups of people here for not-so-serious reasons. A group from Michigan came to Omaha just to cross something off their list.

“Two of us had a bucket list to come to the annual meeting,” said Linda Silverstein. “We were talking at dinner about a year ago, and we all realized that we wanted to come, and we said let’s do it. So here we are.”

There’s a large group of visitors from Southeast Asia. It took some of them more than 40 hours of travel to get here. Taking pictures of Buffett’s home is not the main reason for their stay.

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6 News sat down with the revered financier ahead of Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders meeting and weekend events.

“Actually we’re investors, we’re a group organization based in Singapore, and we’ve been studying investing for the past 15 years,” said Tiffany Pan. “We’ve been teaching people on value investing.”

This neighborhood will be crowded with people over the course of the weekend, all here just to get a look, a picture of Warren Buffett’s home. They say how he lives is an indication of the man and his successful financial strategy.

“He’s thought of as a good investor in the sense of somebody that really looks at the long-term perspective of companies and their roles in society,” Pan said. “I don’t think he’s so much into the short-term investment that gives us a lot of volatility in markets. He’s a reliable figure in terms of sustaining the economy and people’s jobs.”

And for that reason, many people travel hundreds, even thousands of miles from home -- just to look in on the Oracle’s home.

Many of the investors 6 News spoke with believe that — for a billionaire — Buffett makes his living in a fairly modest home.

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