Ack, didn't mean to come off as suggesting you were out of your element... :/ I just wanted to provide more info from a point of view not considered in this thread yet.
I went through this process last year. It was my first house as well. Notional turnover is meaningless. You would only say it to make yourself sound bigger. A mortgage broker will be a waste of time. Mortgage brokers source mortgages for MBS investors. They have strict income guidelines (3 years of w2 income, etc) Your best bet is to go with a bank that will keep your mortgage inhouse (not sell it off as part of an MBS or to Fannie/Freddie) They can lend to you on assets or any other criteria they feel is appropriate. Bank of America doesn't do this but JPMorgan does. TD bank does. And community and regional banks do. If you have any questions feel free to PM me.
Your statistic on cash purchases is because of funds buying housing. Has nothing to do with retail Joe.
v. true. Local colour goes something like this: "Australia now has 4 of the strongest banks in the world. So strong, it seems they'll lend a million bucks to just about anyone." For the application process, I'd generally can the trading results, and mention it only as a hobby. Focus them on the employee income, and, if they query how you got the deposit based on your wages, maybe explain that (only) as one off "investment" profits. Retail banks like employees. Anything more complex makes their heads hurt.
You don't earn more than 4percent on your investment capital? Do you trade on margin? If so how is that okay?
1. Buying a house is far more than a strict financial decision. School districts, children, proximity to relatives, etc all enter into the equation. 2. It depends entirely on his style of trading as to whether or not it reflects either way on his trading abilities. 3. If he's buying to own for a considerable time, ie 5+ years, I'm not sure anyone can predict whether or not it is a good time to buy or not that far out with any sort of reliability. 4. I would argue that the last 6-8 months were an excellent time to buy residential RE for a long term investment. Low prices, relative to pre-2007, extremely low interest rates. I understand that RE doesn't ALWAYS go up, and there have been long periods historically where it stayed flat or didn't even keep up with inflation, but I don't have the ability to predict 10 years out and so you have to make a leap of faith sometimes with housing decisions. The key is to keep your purchase reasonable so that if RE heads south, you still have enough equity to get out from under it if you need to.
I have found that good realtors can recommend good lenders, and good lenders can recommend good realtors.