Red Paper Clip Nets Internet Trader a House in Phoenix

For the price of a paper clip, it's not a bad place to live for a year: a modest semi-detached house with a white picket fence in sunny Phoenix, Arizona.

Yesterday, nearly a year after going online offering to swap a red paper clip for bigger and better things, Kyle MacDonald, 26, of Montreal, Canada, had come tantalisingly close to realising his dream of a free house.

Beginning with the red paper clip, Mr MacDonald made a canny series of trades, from a fish-shaped pen to a door knob to a barbecue to a generator to a free three-day trip to Yahk, British Columbia, to a white van to a recording contract before receiving the offer of rent-free accommodation for a year.

"It looks like a nice house, though I haven't seen it in person," Mr MacDonald told the Guardian yesterday. His blog, oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com, shows pictures of a chalet-style home with a green interior. But while it's worth a lot more than his original paper clip, Mr MacDonald is still not convinced that a year's free rent is the best deal out there. His dream home may be only a trade away.

Since launching his blog, Mr MacDonald has been astounded by the willingness of people to engage in his trading game, which he says was born in the scavenger hunts he played as a child, when they went from house to house swopping their stuff. In exchange for the van he was offered a jobless roommate, seven video games (from a teenager who "needed a new hobby"), a month of telemarketing services, a 17in viola, someone's virginity and another red paper clip.

He has also been astounded by the media attention. He was in New York taping a segment for American breakfast television yesterday. Managing the trades has consumed his life. "This isn't a charity. I view this as a job, an occupation, and I am working quite hard at this - 24 hours a day for the last four months," he said.

So far, he has received offers of a mobile home - nice, but he owns no land - and the offer to live free for a year in the house in Phoenix. Other offers don't even come close, like the full body tattoo, but Mr MacDonald is prepared to wait.

"I don't have anything to trade that is worth as much now as a house," he said. "I'm going to keep going until I get the house and then I am going to live in it."