Imagine if all you needed to own your own house was a worthless hairpin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well that is exactly the feat Demi Skipper has achieved – by trading up items on TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She started the Trade Me Project in May 2020 and swapped various things along the way, including a pair of earrings, an iPhone and three tractors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the 30-year-old, from San Francisco, California, is now the proud owner of a house in Nashville, Tennessee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by Kyle MacDonald, who traded his way from a single red paperclip to a house, in a series of online trades in 2006, Ms Skipper swapped the hairpin for a pair of cheap earrings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From there, she upgraded to four margarita glasses and then a vacuum cleaner, trawling sites such as eBay, Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist to find the right types of items.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her first few trades were done in person around San Francisco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later trades were made through road trips across the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And along the way, Ms Skipper uploaded videos asking for trades to TikTok and Instagram and explained how her ultimate aim was to get to a house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The vacuum cleaner turned into a snowboard, to headphones, to a laptop, to a camera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She then swapped various pairs of Nike trainers before acquiring an iPhone and then a 2008 Dodge Caravan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The vehicle’s owners drove it all the way from Minnesota to San Francisco – and Ms Skipper’s followers grew in number as the story of her Trade Me Project became more exciting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From there, Ms Skipper got a Mini Cooper convertible – and a couple of weeks later, she traded the car for a necklace she thought was worth $20,000 (\u00a315,000), which turned out to be worth less than $2,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Free food
After a frustrating two weeks of searching, Ms Skipper traded the necklace for a Peloton exercise bike worth $1,800.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Peloton bike was traded up to a Mustang – and by last December, Ms Skipper had traded up to a tiny woodland cabin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cabin became a Honda CRV, then three tractors, then a Chipotle celebrity card entitling her to a year’s worth of free food and a catered party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ms Skipper managed to trade the card for a $40,000 trailer with a Tesla Powerwall and then, finally, she made her last trade by swapping the trailer for her very own house near Nashville.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A video she uploaded shows the moment she saw her house for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More than five million people have followed her journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And in January, Ms Skipper and her husband plan to move from California to Tennessee to renovate their new home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Imagine if all you needed to own your own house was a worthless hairpin. Well that is exactly the feat Demi Skipper has achieved – by trading up items on TikTok. She started the Trade Me Project in May 2020 and swapped various things along the way, including a pair of earrings, an iPhone and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n