Funding options for retiree with very substantial assets

[Chris Talley]

A friend of mine recently retired with a very, very substantial amount of money in his retirement accounts but is now having issues getting funding for a personal residence.
He currently lives in CA, and is in the process of moving out-of-state to TN. He's under contract on a property for 1.7MM, an amount which he could easily cover with cash from his retirement account. However, drawing a lump sum of that size from his retirement account is highly inefficient from a tax perspective, especially while he's still a CA resident. He'd obviously prefer to fund the purchase with debt, either with a mortgage or a line of credit secured by cash in his retirement account. But big banks are turning him down simply on the grounds of income requirements, given that he very recently retired. The tax situation means that any reasonable interest rate is still a significant win for him. Any ideas on how to help him find a lender that would handle this type of unusual circumstance? Seems like this should be a very low-risk loan for the lenders, given that he can fully collateralize the loan with cash in his retirement accounts.