Recent ads for the Marco Kozlowski / U.S. Property Success / U.S. Property Network / At Will Events hotel seminars include a photo and quote from “Warren Buffet” (sic). The photo is of Warren Buffett, and the text proclaims “Warren Buffet (sic) told CNBC he would buy a couple of hundred thousand single family homes if he could.”

The photo, text and misspelling were used in the recent Montreal Gazette ads (January 30 and Feruary 1). The example below is from a January 14, 2016 ad in the Jan. 14 edition of the Toronto 24 Hours publication.

The text seems to refer to a 3 hour interview with Warren Buffett that was on CNBC on February 27, 2012. The full transcript is online – the first page is at http://www.cnbc.com/id/46541

Here is a fuller excerpt of the comment on single family homes:

“BUFFETT: I would say the single-family homes are cheap now, too.

BECKY: You would?

BUFFETT: Yeah, single-family homes— but if I had a way of buying a couple hundred thousand single-family homes and had a way of managing— the management is enormous— is really the problem because they’re one by one. They’re not like apartment houses. So— but I would load up on them and I would— I would take mortgages out at very, very low rates. But if anybody is thinking about buying a home— five years ago they couldn’t buy them fast enough because they thought they were going to go up, and now they don’t buy them because they think they’re going to go down. And interest are far lower. It’s a way, in effect, to short the dollar because you can— you can take a 30-year mortgage and if it turns out your interest rate’s too high, next week you refinance lower. And if it turns out it’s too low, the other guy’s stuck with it for 30 years. So it’s a very attractive asset class now.

BECKY: If you are a young individual investor at home and you have your choice between buying your first home or investing in stocks, where would you tell someone is the better bet?

BUFFETT: Well, if I thought I was going to live— if I knew where I was going to want to live the next five or 10 years I would— I would buy a home and I’d finance it with a 30-year mortgage, and it’s a terrific deal. And if I— literally, if I was an investor that was a handy type, which I’m not, and I could buy a couple of them at distressed prices and find renters, I think that’s— and again take a 30-year mortgage, it’s a leveraged way of owning a very cheap asset now and I think that’s probably as an attractive an investment as you can make now. But I think equities are very attractive compared to anything else.

BECKY: But, obviously, they’ve come up quite a bit since you first were telling people you were buying them for your personal portfolio…”