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Still, trading houses has its drawbacks, the main one being that beggars can't be choosers. "You can't just walk into your dream neighborhood and say, 'Oh, I'll take that one,'" Melissa Petrocco says. "With swaps, you walk into a house and say, 'I can work with that.'"
Will these new home-shopping networks put more real estate agents out of business? "The site is open to Realtors and helps them connect motivated sellers," says Daniel Westbrook, CEO of onlinehousetrading.com which now has more than 50,000 frustrated property owners looking to make a swap. "The reason they turn to us at all is they've exhausted all other options."