Apartment buyers using stock portfolios as collateral

From the November issue: In early 2015, an investment banker and his wife were eyeing a two-bedroom condominium listed at $2 million on the Upper East Side. The couple was wealthy, according to their friend and broker Mike Loftus of William Raveis, but not wealthy enough to buy the unit outright.

They had $500,000 in cash and “a pretty big portfolio, but not that big,” Loftus said of their financial investments, which he pegged at between $5 million and $7 million. They needed to borrow the balance for the apartment — $1.5 million — but didn’t want to go through the hassle of a mortgage. [more]