Should I sell my entire stock portfolio to fund a home purchase?

I would like to buy a home in the beginning of 2008 and currently have most of my money in a brokerage account in ETF holdings, which is about $15,000.

My question is whether I should liquidate my entire portfolio to pay for the down payment. Would trading the portfolio for a down payment be a good investment? It would be hard to come up with the cash for a 20% down payment without selling off a good chunk of it.

Also, is it wise to keep the ETF's right now or should I look for lower-risk investments if I plan on using the cash within a year? It is pretty well diversified and the returns have been decent these past few years.

By the time I plan on buying, I should have about 18-20k in cash savings in addition to the portfolio.

I am 21 years old so have some time to regenerate the portfolio, but just wanted to get your opinions. Any advice would help...thanks!

Thanks for the responses everyone! They are very helpful. The "home" that I'm referring to will most likely be a condo....and yes I am maxing out my contributions (and will continue to do so) in my retirement accounts.
Thanks!

I would, you can invest at a brokerage anytime later. You are much better off putting down 20% or as close to 20% as possible.

If you don't the bank makes you pay PMI ( mortgage insurance) which is not tax deductible. So use all the money you have to buy your first house.

Also - this assumes that your brokerage account is NOT and IRA or 401k. Don't liquidate retirement accounts - you will be penalized

I would say that to buy a house and stop paying rent is the best investment you could make.

it would help if you say whet the etf's were. However this is what I did when I knew I was moving. First I got a pre approved mortgage that whay I knew excatly how much to bring to the table and I had to wipe out a very good chunk of my mutual funds to do this (and I hated to do it the money lost from the investments could never be made up). So what I did was put very little to none into my mutual funds (andother bad move but read on) because what I did was open an online savings account and put as much as i could in that and let it ride and get the interest. The money I made in the online bank made teh difference for i only lost half of my portfolio when the sale was final. I hated to pilliage my funds for all of them were pretty good for me. But I have now consolidated down into two etf's and one mutual fund (my lone hold out that i did NOT pilliage and it made somewhere in the range of 22% last year).

Thats my advice to you invest little but go on overload into an online savings bank get the interest there and good luck.

I did

You ask a lot of good questions. Here are a few brief answers:

-You are right, your ETFs have done well over the past few years, I would suggest lightening up on some of them, and maybe sellng it all if you thinkg you will need the cash before long. The market can come up with some nasty surprises sometimes, and there are many risks to the market right now, anyway.

-However much you put down on your house, make sure you do not become "House poor", where you have either created a payment that sucks too much of your monthly income, or where you put too much of your liquid net worth into it and do not have 3 months or so of salary sitting in cash on the sidelines.

if you are planning to use some of your portfolio for retirement i would not suggest selling it all off but at your age it would not kill you as you would still have plenty of time to generate a large portfolio by retirement if you do sell it off make sure you still continue putting money in a 401k or IRA as the best time to save is while you are still young

Second any investment money needed with in five years is not reccomended to be allocated largely to stocks as downturn in the market may not be able to be recovered within the time period you would need your cash but this is just a reccomendation to prevent loss of capital. just keep in mind that if you do keep your money allocated strongly to stocks you have market risk

If I were you (and I'm not) I would leave the stocks where they are and save for another year or two before buying. The stocks should be worth tons of money eventually. Time is your best asset when investing. Besides, the real estate market is priced pretty high. I'd wager that it will drop in the next couple of years. On the flip side, if you really want a house now and you have the resources buy it. It's your life and your money. Neither option is a bad idea.

Tough, tough, tough question!! The answer MAY be in your last line...you're young and have time to " start over"" as it were...but geeeeez, you hate to see a profitable portfolio just " trashed".
You might consider trying to keep at least $ 5000. in some kind of investments... maybe just a couple of " international/ global" funds..( hard to pass on those 20+% returns) ...
Do you already have the home/development/ area picked out? If not ...start looking for maybe a bargain- priced home...it doesn't have to be a dog, sometimes working with the " right" agent, with certain " set" parameters, you can find a seller that HAS to move ...will come down a little ,etc.
If you can't, I suppose you go with " plan A"...and when you start to regenerate that portfolio, don't forget to make some of those investments into IRA's.
Best of luck.