Everyone has heard about how soul-destroyingly difficult it is to get on the property ladder.
But one Californian has found her way into home ownership, starting with a bobby pin.
Demi Skipper, 29, took about 18 months and 28 trades to go from a bobby pin to a house.
She traded her way through earrings, a car, tractors and diamonds, until she got the property.
"I've come to the conclusion that there is an item for everybody," she told Checkpoint.
"So even the strangest, craziest item, somebody in the world will want it and I just have to find the right people for the right items.
"There were 28 trades in total that got me to the house. The first 14 I didn't say anything about the 'trade me project' or what I was doing, and was trying to get all the way until I could get to a house with no one realising.
"But clearly, the TikTok and social media took off and it was harder and harder to find people who had no idea. But the first 14 trades just were people who needed a vacuum cleaner, or wanted a set of margarita glasses, or just had something they were interested in.
"The other thing that was interesting is if I had reached out to someone and said, 'I see you have this vacuum cleaner, instead of me paying you could I give you another item?' - if they said no, I would say: 'Is there something you would be interested in?'
"And sometimes people would say: "I really would love a skateboard," so then I'd go find a skateboard. So there was definitely an element of strategy and finding what people wanted, and then there was definitely that element of people who just really wanted to be involved towards the end."
One trade looked very good for Skipper, when she traded a $6000 car for what was believed to be a $20,000 diamond necklace.
"But what ended up happening was after I got it appraised, it actually was not worth $20,000. I took it to a jeweller they looked closer at it and it was worth a tenth of that - $2,000.
"When that happened, I walked out of the jewellery shop and almost cried."
But she persisted, and from $2000 started trading up again.
Skipper said she was not paying for anything, except shipping of small items, up until around the twentieth trade.
She did have to pay for some big shipments when she was dealing with cars, but towards the end she had help from Volkswagen to get to Canada for her final trade – the house.
"It was built in the 1950s in a town just out of Nashville (Ontario) but has a really cute downtown. It's got two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a really big backyard which I'm going to try and figure out what I'm going to do with.
"I'm going to renovate it and live in it. And then I think I'm going to just trade the house for a bobby pin.
"So give someone else this home and have them trade me a bobby pin and do it all over again."
The house is worth about US$80,000 – about NZ$118,000. So it might take more than 28 trades and some fancier items than a bobby pin to get into home ownership in Aotearoa.
