I know Fidelity does asset based mortgages, which they tout as better than going more conventional, but have honestly never checked out the details. Obviously, they prefer to lend you the money than have you take out your money to pay cash.

With the latter, if I were wanting to buy property, I would prefer not having to liquidate my investment and retirement accounts and would actually want a mortgage. That may be where a lot of folks would land (depending on the interest rate, of course). This is on the plus side.

In the former, this would concern me though since basing my ability to get a mortgage on my investment accounts or a percentage of them would seem to be risky in the case of a falling market. I would assume that if the accounts fell below a certain level that the mortgage would be called so that I would end up liquidating a portion of the accounts at the worst possible moment. And back to the rates again: if these are fixed, then OK, but if they end of mostly being floating rates, that could spell a big hit, again at a bad time. This is definitely on the minus side.

Lots of "what ifs" involved in asset based mortgages.

Pete