Quote from Rationalize:
Perhaps they would think you're full of sh1t?
"I trade tens of millions of dollars of stock, but humbly struggle to borrow $xyz for a house"
No acute offence intended, just saying wtf.
Like how did you get borrow for your trading.
You're clearly not a finance person. (Which is a compliment.)
Having equity tied up in your home can, in many cases, not be ideal.
A lot of companies will sell their real estate (even when that includes their own offices) and lease them back from the new owners. It might sound stupid, but this is often a very capital efficient way of managing their assets. (It also makes them more nimble.)
Or, in other words, it sucks to be 'asset rich' but 'cash poor' when you can employ said cash in ways that beat out the returns said assets (real estate) was returning you.
In a trader's world, that means if their expectancy on risk capital in play is higher than the annualized average growth of their local housing market, it might make more sense to have a few extra hundred grand in their trading accounts and a mortgage to service, than say, owning a home but missing out on the extra juice.
Presenting yourself to the bank as 'self employed' and backing it up with proof of income over the last two or three years is usually enough to get the mortgage conversation started. That's not to say it won't be harder to get one approved, but at least you get the ball rolling...
EDIT: To be clear though, I subscribe to the idea of debt == fragility (a la, NNT) so I personally don't like any debt especially if it's debt taken out to trade. I'm just saying from a "finance/business graduate" perspective that even when you have the money, it can make a lot of sense to still take out a mortgage.
