I bought a house last year and long story short ended up not selling my condo, meaning to close I needed to not sell a chunk of my investments. Problem is, many had significant capital gains. I ended up just taking a margin loan for a blended rate of about 1%. I avoided capital gains, the margin interest is deductible, and my tech heavy portfolio has increased substantially in absolute terms and on a percentage return basis is crushing it.

I was comfortable with margin/leverage, for a few years I was very successful with a strategy of buying blue chip dividend stocks on margin and essentially running a credit spread trade- it's not for everyone.

But IB is outstanding compared to other brokers around things like this- it really excel for the "prosumer" niche.