Collateral → Down payment

Borrow against the shares, shrink the mortgage.

A Liquidity Access Line charges interest only — no principal — so every dollar it takes off the mortgage costs less each month. The curve falls until your safety cap or the price says stop.

Rent → Buy → Buy with the LAL

Rent it, buy it, or buy it with the LAL.

Renting builds no equity but ties up no cash. A mortgage builds equity slowly, once you have paid to get in and back out again. The LAL cuts the monthly cost but builds nothing, because interest-only never touches principal. This is what each one leaves you holding.

Inputs
The property
The collateral
The terms

SOFR + spread, fetched on load

The comparison

Your budget is the slice of after-tax income you earmark for housing and saving, not your whole income. Leave out food, transport, travel and anything else you would spend wherever you lived. Every path spends all of it, so whatever it does not spend on housing it banks and invests. A path costing more than the budget shows negative savings, which means you could not fund it. Property tax, HOA and maintenance apply to the two buying paths only. A payoff term of 0 keeps the line interest-only.

The tax picture

2026 figures: standard deduction $32,200 joint or $16,100 single, SALT cap $40,400, mortgage debt limit $750k, home gain exclusion $500k joint or $250k single. Add 3.8 to the capital gains rate for the net investment income tax, plus your state rate. Property tax is the slice of your taxes-insurance-HOA figure that is actually tax. The SALT cap phases down above $505k of income toward a $10,000 floor, so set it to your own effective cap.

Portfolio collateral
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Available credit line
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Max draw at cap
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Mortgage at max draw
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Payment at reference draw
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LAL draw modeled
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Mortgage, plain buy
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Mortgage, buy + LAL
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LAL payment
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Rent in the final year
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Rent that ties a plain buy
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Paying the LAL down wins below
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Expected value only. The interest you save is certain, while the investment return is an average with bad years in it. Paying down also shrinks the margin-call risk, so both tilt toward doing it sooner than this number alone suggests.

Total monthly payment as the line does more of the work

30-yr amortizing · interest-only line
Nothing to draw yet Your cash down already covers the full price.

Drag across the chart for a breakdown

No draw
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At the cap
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Difference
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Over 5 years
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What each path leaves you holding, month by month

5-yr horizon · sold at exit
Rent Buy, mortgage only Buy + LAL
Nothing to compare yet Enter a selling price to model the three paths.

Drag across the chart for a breakdown

Renting
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Plain mortgage
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Buy + LAL
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LAL vs. buy
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Payments come out of income, so cash out is shown for context and is not part of the sum. Whichever path costs least in a given month invests the gap against the most expensive one, so all three spend the same and the net figures compare directly. Tax saved is banked at each year end and is already inside cash and investments. Net sale proceeds are after selling costs and after tax on any home gain above the exclusion; gains tax on the pot is charged as if you liquidated at the horizon.
Over the horizonRentBuyBuy + LAL
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