Investing

Buffett Housing Play: Pay Mortgage If You Lose Your Job (BRK-A)

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) is known for investing in and owning many businesses which Warren Buffett believes or believed had a time horizon of “forever” even if they closed the stock market.  In this he actually has some homebuilder…

By Douglas A. McIntyre
Published April 16, 2009, 9:53am ET · 1 min read

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Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) is known for investing in and owning many businesses which Warren Buffett believes or believed had a time horizon of “forever” even if they closed the stock market.  In this he actually has some homebuilder exposure and exposure to the building products side of the housing sector.  It owns Clayton Homes, and Clayton has built more than 1,000,000 homes since 1934.  Clayton is following the path of some automakers: paying for your mortgage if you lose your job.

For new homebuyers, Clayton is offering a 3-month mortgage payment guarantee if they lose their job because of the economic downturn.  If the monthly mortgage payment includes homeowners insurance and property taxes, Clayton will absorb those costs as well.  The Payment Protection Program is applicable for new manufactured homes purchased between now and the end of June.

There is a gimmick every day in the new economy.  It worked for cars.

Jon C. Ogg

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Douglas A. McIntyre

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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