1962: Warren Buffett Attacks Real Estate Companies

In 1962, Warren Buffett penned a letter to the editor of financial magazine Barron’s Following an article the paper had recently run on publicly traded real estate companies. In the letter, Buffett attacks these businesses for their “Advanced accounting techniques,” which were being used to boost income and justify higher valuations. [buffett] Warren Buffett Attacks Real Estate Companies “An item fully as important as the lack of quantitative coverage of dividends may well turn out to be the dubious quality of the income of many of these companies,” Buffett writes. “Where it is somewhat difficult in many cases to determine…