I wanted to add an update to this; banks are crazy. (Or maybe the regulations around granting mortgages are crazy.)
As I mentioned earlier, DH and I applied for a mortgage to buy a smaller house. Our credit scores are around 770-780. They'd be higher but we churned the credit cards a little last year as I dumped some of the loyalty program cards and went for straight cash-back. Our record of payments on credit cards and the mortgage is impeccable.
We applied for a mortgage that would be 6% of our invested assets and less than half the price of the house we're buying. Our bank originates its own loans but then sells them, so they want to meet Fannie Mae standards. (A "non-conforming" loan would have had an interest rate 150 basis points higher.) Fannie Mae is very picky about what sources of income it will consider. Without going into a lot of gory numbers, our taxable dividends in 2014 were enough to pay that mortgage. Taxable capital gains were twice that, and of course the income from the IRAs doesn't show up in the taxes at all.
They can loan us 4% of the value of our invested assets. And that's counting DH's SS as part of our income.
We'll take it, but I find this mind-boggling. They'll loan ridiculous amounts to people with installment debt up the wazoo and zero savings but a regular paycheck, but can't deal with a couple of retirees who could pay cash for the house nearly ten times over.
Maybe they think we'll spend it all on a private plane and they'll have to foreclose on the mortgage.