How to Buy a Home Without Selling Investments

Short answer. You can fund a home purchase without selling investments by (1) borrowing against your portfolio with a Securities-Backed Line of Credit (SBLOC), (2) using a margin loan inside your brokerage account, (3) qualifying for an asset-depletion mortgage that treats your portfolio as implied income, or (4) combining a traditional jumbo mortgage with one of the above for the down payment. Each path keeps your portfolio compounding and avoids triggering capital gains, but each carries trade-offs you have to model against your actual numbers.

If you have a meaningful taxable investment portfolio and you're about to buy a home, the obvious move — sell enough stock to cover the purchase — is almost always the most expensive one. Liquidating long-held positions triggers federal long-term capital gains under IRS Topic 409, state taxes, and a 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax for high earners. On a portfolio with significant unrealized gains, the combined hit can be 30–45% of the realized gain. And that's before counting the opportunity cost of the dollars that stop compounding.

There are four practical ways to fund the purchase while keeping the portfolio intact. Each one has different mechanics, different risks, and a different best-fit borrower profile.

1. The SBLOC — borrow against your portfolio

A Securities-Backed Line of Credit is the most direct answer to "how do I buy without selling." You pledge your investment portfolio as collateral, and the lender extends a revolving credit line typically sized at 30–70% of the portfolio's market value. You draw on the line, the proceeds fund the down payment or the full purchase, and your portfolio stays invested.

The advantages line up cleanly:

Zero capital gains realization. The portfolio isn't sold; it's pledged.
Your investments keep compounding at full market rate.
Closing is fast — typically 2–4 weeks, no income documentation required.
Interest is variable but often competitive with jumbo mortgage rates after deductibility adjustments.

The trade-offs are real. Interest is generally not tax-deductible the way mortgage interest on a primary residence is — see IRS Publication 936 on the security-of-loan requirement. Rates are variable, so cost moves with SOFR. And the unique risk is the margin call: if your portfolio value drops below the lender's maintenance ratio, you'll be required to deposit cash, sell securities, or pay down the line — potentially at the worst possible time. FINRA's Securities-Backed Lines of Credit alert and the SEC's SBLOC investor bulletin document forced liquidations during 2008 and 2020 drawdowns.

For the full mechanics — how lenders assign advance rates, calculate maintenance ratios, and enforce calls — see How an SBLOC Works. For the decision framework comparing SBLOC against cash and a traditional mortgage, our SBLOC vs Mortgage vs Cash pillar guide walks through worked examples at a $1.5M home purchase price.

2. The margin loan — same idea, different envelope

A margin loan lives inside your brokerage account and is regulated under Federal Reserve Regulation T. Mechanically, it works like an SBLOC: pledge your securities, borrow against them. The differences are in pricing, enforcement, and legal classification.

Margin rates at the cheapest brokerage (Interactive Brokers Pro) can be 100–175 basis points below the equivalent SBLOC rate at a private bank. For a borrower with a $1M+ line, the savings compound meaningfully — IBKR Pro's published rate runs around SOFR + 0.5–1.0% at HNW tiers, while a Schwab Pledged Asset Line at the same size sits closer to SOFR + 2.25%.

The catch is enforcement. IBKR's margin enforcement is algorithmic; if your account violates maintenance, liquidation happens within minutes. There's no relationship banker to negotiate a cure window. For HNW borrowers who want a human in the loop during a market drawdown, the rate savings often don't justify the operational risk.

The lender-by-lender breakdown of pricing and enforcement is in SBLOC Rates 2026: Schwab, Fidelity, IBKR, Morgan Stanley.

3. The asset-depletion mortgage — qualify on assets, not income

If your wealth is liquid but your W-2 income is small (a common profile for early retirees, founders pre-exit, family-office principals, and tech employees with most comp in equity), you may struggle to qualify for a traditional jumbo on debt-to-income calculations alone. The asset-depletion mortgage solves this.

The lender calculates "implied income" from your portfolio by dividing the eligible balance by 360 months (a 30-year loan term). A $5M liquid portfolio implies roughly $13,900 per month of qualifying income — enough to support a $2M+ jumbo at typical DTI ratios. You take a regular fixed-rate mortgage; you just qualified on assets rather than W-2 history.

This path is offered by Schwab Bank, Fidelity-affiliated lenders, regional private-wealth banks (Citizens, Banner), and some non-QM specialty lenders. Pricing typically runs 25–50 basis points above standard jumbo rates because the qualifying income is implied rather than W-2 documented. In exchange, you get a traditional fixed mortgage — no margin call risk, full mortgage interest deduction up to the $750,000 acquisition-indebtedness cap, and predictable monthly payments for 15 or 30 years.

For HNW borrowers who don't actually need to sell investments to qualify but think they do, asset depletion is often the straightforward answer that gets missed. If your DTI is the only obstacle, ask your lender about it before defaulting to a portfolio-backed loan.

4. The hybrid — jumbo plus SBLOC for the down payment

The most common HNW hybrid: an 80% jumbo mortgage covers the bulk of the purchase, and an SBLOC funds the 20% down payment. The borrower locks in fixed-rate certainty on the larger half, avoids realizing capital gains on the down payment portion, and keeps the entire portfolio invested.

The math often beats either pure path. The jumbo's interest is partially deductible under IRS Pub 936 (up to the $750K cap), reducing the effective rate. The SBLOC carries a smaller balance over a shorter expected horizon. And because the SBLOC balance is small relative to portfolio value, margin call risk is muted — a 50% market drawdown on a $5M portfolio backing a $300K SBLOC still leaves significant cushion above maintenance.

A second hybrid worth knowing: the "delayed financing" structure. The SBLOC funds an all-cash close (which often wins multi-bid scenarios with a 2–5% effective negotiating discount), then a conventional jumbo refinances the SBLOC within 90 days. The buyer captures the cash-offer advantage; the SBLOC ends up serving as a short-duration bridge. This works best when your cash flow can comfortably cover the SBLOC carry during the bridge window. Mechanics in Using an SBLOC as a Bridge Loan.

For the full framework comparing all four paths — including when each one wins — see the HNW home buyer financing pillar.

How to choose

The right path depends on your specific situation, but five variables drive the answer:

Your cost basis on the portfolio. Low basis (long-held, heavily appreciated) makes the SBLOC's no-tax advantage most valuable. High basis (recent contributions) shrinks the gap.
Your tax bracket and state. High federal-plus-state bracket compounds both the cost of liquidation and the value of mortgage interest deductibility — the two effects partially offset, but in a high-tax state the SBLOC or hybrid usually edges ahead.
Your income stability and DTI. Stable W-2 income supports any path. Limited W-2 with large liquid assets points to asset-depletion underwriting.
Your time horizon in the home. Long horizons (10+ years) favor fixed-rate mortgage components for payment certainty. Short horizons (3–7 years) favor SBLOC because the variable-rate exposure window is small.
Your tolerance for margin-call risk. This is the binary one. If a forced liquidation in a drawdown would be catastrophic — financially or psychologically — SBLOC and pure margin loans are the wrong tool, regardless of how attractive the rate looks in calm markets.

A common decision pattern: high-bracket professionals with stable income choose the hybrid (jumbo + SBLOC down payment) most often, because it captures the tax efficiency of the mortgage on the bulk while avoiding the down-payment liquidation hit. Pre-retirement investors with limited W-2 income but large liquid assets often land on asset-depletion. Pure-SBLOC plays make most sense for borrowers with very high concentration of long-held appreciated stock who plan a relatively short home tenure.

When selling actually makes sense

Worth noting the cases where the obvious move is also the right one:

Low-cost-basis portfolios. If most of your portfolio is recent contributions or dividend reinvestments, the realized gain on liquidation is small and the after-tax cost is low.
No-income-tax states. California's 13.3% state tax on capital gains makes liquidation expensive. Texas's zero state tax makes the calculus very different.
Idle savings. If the funding source is a savings account earning 4% in a money market rather than appreciated equities, there's no opportunity cost worth preserving.
Cash-offer leverage. In a competitive bidding environment, an all-cash offer can win at a price 2–5% below a financed offer. If the negotiation savings exceed the after-tax cost of liquidation, selling can be the right move.

The full framing of when liquidation costs more than it appears — and when it's the better answer — is in The $200K Mistake: Liquidating Stock for a Down Payment and the tax mechanics are in Capital Gains Tax on Home Down Payments Explained.

Run your specific numbers

The decision framework above gives you a starting point, but the right answer for any specific buyer depends on your portfolio composition, cost basis, tax bracket, state of residence, expected returns, and the lender rates currently quoted to you. Stockstead models all four paths against your actual numbers and shows the after-tax cost of each side-by-side.

Run your numbers with Stockstead →

The cheapest path on paper is rarely the cheapest path after-tax. Most HNW buyers who model their actual situation find the answer is closer than they expected — and frequently different from the option they assumed was best.

Sources and further reading

Educational, not financial advice. Tyler Singletary is the founder of Stockstead and is not a licensed financial advisor or CPA. The figures and frameworks in this guide are illustrative; your specific situation depends on portfolio composition, tax bracket, residency, and lender pricing available to you. Consult a fiduciary advisor and a tax professional before acting on any strategy described here.