Cashing in stocks for house downpayment
I'm not sure where people keep getting this idea, but I see it come up a lot. Anyway, you pay capital gains taxes when you sell an investment that has appreciated. It makes no difference when/if you reinvest the money or what you invest it in. If you are afraid of the tax burden you can minimize it by: 1) Selling a stock that you have held longer than a year to get the lower long-term rate. 2) Sell a stock that hasn't appreciated that much and therefore doesn't have a lot of gains to tax. 3) Sell a stock that's below purchase price (i.e. at a loss) to offset any short term gains. Assuming that you have capital gains, you can expect to have to pay taxes on them. It might be short term, or long term capital gains. If you specify exactly which shares to sell, it is possible to sell mostly losers, thus reducing or eliminating capital gains.  There are separate rules for 401K and other retirement programs regarding down payments for a house. This leads to many other issues such as the hit your retirement will take.
"You are ""pool[ing] the sales from both houses as downpayment on the new house."" But they are going to pay you rent.  Your question as it stands, just opens more questions. What, exactly is the ownership of the new house? If your's (and your wife's) was the money a gift?  Ignoring the gift, if that's what it is, and if the in-law suite is 25% of the house value, you have a rental. You claim 25% of the expenses, including property tax and mortgage interest, along with 25% of the utilities, unless their part has its own meters.  That's a start, if you add details, I may edit my answer. (Not to be pedantic, but whose parents are they. They can't be ""our in-laws,"" can they?)" I agree with you that you need to consolidate this debt using a loan. It may be hard to find a bank or credit organization that will give you an unsecured personal loan for that much money.  I know of one, called Lending Club (Disclaimer - I'm an investor on this platform. Not trying to advertise, it's just the only place I know of off the top of my head) that facilitates loans like this, but instead of a bank financing the loan, the loan is split up accross hundreds of investors who each contribute a small amount (such as $25). They have rates anywhere between 5-30%, based on your credit profile(s), and I believe they have some loan amounts that go up to the area that you're discussing.  Regarding buying the house - The best thing you can do when trying to buy a house is to save up a 20% downpayment, if at all possible. Below this amount, you may be asked to pay for 'PMI' - Private Mortgage Insurance. This is a charge that doesn't go away for quite a while (until you've paid them 20% of the appraised value of the home), where you pay a premium because you didn't have the 20% downpayment for the house.  I would suggest you try to eliminate your credit card debt as soon as possible, and would recommend the same for your father. Getting your utilization down and reconsolidating the large debts with a loan will help to reduce interest charges and get you a reasonable, fixed payment.  Whether you decide to pay off your own balances using your savings account is up to you; if it were me, personally, I'd do so immediately rather than trying to pay it off over time. But if you lose money to taxes by withdrawing the money from your 'tax free savings account', it may not be a beneficial situation.  Treat debt, especially credit card debt, like an emergency at all times, and you'll find yourself in a better place as a result.  Credit card debt and balances are and should be temporary, and their rates and fees are structured that way. If, for any reason, you expect that a credit card's balance will remain for an extended period of time, you may want to consider whether it would be advantageous for you to consolidate the debt into a loan, instead. Yes, PMI is what the lender requires to loan you more than 8O% of the home's value. I could easily present scenarios where it's exactly the right decision to use PMI and get the purchase done. A 100K mortgage at 90% LTV will cost you $521/year in PMI.  If you are renting and struggling to get a higher downpayment, it can take quite a long time to save the additional $11K to put down. Only the buyer can know if the house is such s bargain, or if rates have bottomed, but the decision isn't so clear cut. "I'm not aware that any US bank has any way to access your credit rating in France (especially as you basically don't have one!). In the US, banks are not the only way to get finance for a home.  In many regions, there are plenty of ""owner financed"" or ""Owner will carry"" homes.  For these, the previous owner will provide a private mortgage for the balance if you have a large (25%+) downpayment.  No strict lending rules, no fancy credit scoring systems, just a large enough downpayment so they know they'll get their money back if they have to foreclose.  For the seller, it's a way to shift a house that is hard to sell plus get a regular income. Often this mortgage is for only 3-10 years, but that gives you the time to establish more credit and then refinance.  Maybe the interest rate is a little higher also, but again it's just until you can refinance to something better (or sell other assets then pay the loan off quick). For new homes, the builders/developers may offer similar finance. For both owner-will-carry and developer finance, a large deposit will trump any credit rating concerns.  There is usually a simplified foreclosure process, so they're not really taking much of a risk, so can afford to be flexible. Make sure the owner mortgage is via a title company, trust company, or escrow company, so that there's a third party involved to ensure each party lives up to their obligations." Save up a bigger downpayment.  The lender's requirement is going to be based on how much you finance, not the price of the house. Leverage is when you borrow in order to invest. Mind you, most people aren't going to just give you money to gamble on the stock market completely unsecured; rather, you deposit (say) $10,000 and buy a stock... and then you have $10k in assets which you can borrow against, so you can buy another $10,000 of that stock. Now if the stock goes up you'll make twice the gain (2x leverage). However, if it goes down, you'll lose twice as much as well. If the value of your stock falls, your line of credit will be reduced as well; in this case, since you used all your credit and are now over your limit, your broker will issue a margin call (they will demand a deposit of additional funds, or they will sell some of your stock at their discretion). This protects you from owing more than you invested, but it's still sometimes possible (for instance, if a company spontaneously goes bankrupt and becomes worthless, and your stock becomes worthless). There are also things like leveraged index funds and commodity funds which aim to return some multiple of the market's earnings. These are designed for intraday trading, though, and usually end up underperforming significantly over the long term. [edit] Mose people who accept borrowed funds should generally accept real cash as well. However, if you're trying to short sell, i.e. borrow shares and sell them (in the hopes you can get them back cheaper later after the stock falls) you will need a margin line of credit to do so as well. [edit 2] clarified margin calls "Really this is no different from any kind of large lump sum and having a mortgage.  There are probably many questions and answers on this subject.  It really doesn't matter that the proceeds were the result of a sale, an inheritance would not change the answer. I think it is important to note that the proceeds will not eliminate the house 2 mortgage. A high level choice of investment one makes is between equity (such as stock) and debt investments (such as bonds and mortgages).  You are in a unique case of being able to invest in your own mortgage with no investment fee.  This may tip the scales in favor of paying down the mortgage.   It is difficult to answer in your specific case as we don't know the rest of your finances.  Do you have a sizable 401K that is heavily invested in stocks?  Do you have the need for a college fund?  Do you have an emergency fund?  Do you have a desire to own several homes generating income property? If it was me I'd do the following in order, skipping steps I may have already completed: I've heard that the bank may agree to a ""one time adjustment"" to lower the payments on Mortgage #2 because of paying a very large payment. Is this something that really happens? I really kind of hate this attitude.  Your goal is to get rid of the mortgage in a timely manner.  Doing such makes paying for kids college a snap, reduces the income one might need in retirement, basically eliminates the need for life insurance, and gives one a whole lot of money to have fun with." Buying individual/small basket of high dividend shares is exposing you to 50%+ and very fast potential downswings in capital/margin calls. There is no free lunch in returns in this respect: nothing that pays enough to help you pay your mortgage at a high rate won’t expose you to a lot of potential volatility. Main issue here looks like you have very poorly performing rental investments you should consider selling or switching up rental usage/how you rent them (moving to shorter term, higher yield lets, ditching any agents/handymen that are taking up capital/try and refinance to lower mortgage rates etc etc). Trying to use leveraged stock returns to pay for poorly performing housing investments is like spraying gasoline all over a fire. Fixing the actual issue in hand first is virtually always the best course of action in these scenarios.