"I probably left 20% on the table. But I got out intact, and I was selling into a sellers' market," he says. "My timing was very fortunate."
While he sold the lion's share of his real estate holdings, he still owns a fair amount of property, including a farm in New Zealand that his son operates, several properties in Australia, some houses in Florida and one in California.
He also owns a tree farm in the Catskills of New York state that he bought 10 years ago for less than $1 million that he estimates is now worth $3 million to $4 million. He bought it as a distressed property, but shortly afterward, some local residents knocked on his door asking if they could log his land. He realized there was money in the forest and meadowlands he had bought. Some of the trees were black cherry and red oak, which are used in high-end furniture, while others were hard maple, which is used in flooring for things like basketball courts. He predicts he can earn as much as $100,000 a year selling the timber. He's about to find out. He's poised to harvest his first 200 to 300 acres worth and already has the furniture makers lined up to buy it. Revenue-producing farms also carry favorable tax treatment, giving him a break on his property taxes.
Varney is also playing currencies, and he currently likes those that benefit from strong natural resource sales, such as the Australian, New Zealand and Canadian dollars. The Australian dollar, relative to the U.S. dollar, has gone from 90 cents to $1.05 over the last couple of years. The New Zealand dollar has gone from 70 cents to 82 cents. The Canadian dollar has gone from about 95 cents to $1.03. He bets on currencies by buying assets in those countries rather than buying futures-futures are for traders, he says-and his bet is that these currencies will rise relative to the U.S. dollar, given that they're selling a lot of natural resources to China.
"The only thing that would upset this play is if China goes bust," he says.
Varney As Anchor
Those who know Varney say his personality on air is much like his personality off: enthusiastic, highly engaging and exceedingly smart. Elisabeth Murphy, who worked as an intern for Fox & Friends, a morning news show on which Varney makes regular appearances, said he was one of the few anchors who would come up with topics himself and do his own legwork to research them.
"A lot of anchors usually just come in and whatever we gave them, they'd read it. He'd be very proactive about giving us stuff he was passionate about talking about," she says.
That passion is one of his hallmarks. Bill Hemmer, who worked with Varney first at CNN and later at Fox, says Varney's enthusiasm for the story always comes through on the screen, not an easy feat on a medium as unnatural as television.
"You're sitting there looking at this black hole, and you're trying to reach through the screen and communicate to people who are doing god knows what on the other end as they go about their lives. It's not an easy thing to do, but this guy does it well on every single story," Hemmer says. "He has an uncanny way of getting you to listen to what he has to say."
Part of it comes from knowing his topics. Varney's co-workers say the London School of Economics graduate is incredibly knowledgeable, and very well read. He also has an ability to assess a situation quicker than most, says Steve Doocy, a co-anchor on Fox & Friends.
"I'll see one tree, while he'll get the whole sweep of the forest, and the creek down there and a mountain on the ridge," Doocy says. "He just has a very good eye for the whole picture."