Diane Peek needed to move from Georgia to central Florida, but for six months no one even showed interest in the house she and her husband built outside Atlanta. In suburban Orlando, Andrew Bou needed to sell his family home to move to Atlanta, but also no luck.

Peek and Bou each joined a Web site that matches people willing to trade their homes. They punched in their needs, their likes and dislikes, and like two singles finding love on a dating site, they became a match. About seven months later, they swapped homes.

Peek and Bou are part of a small but growing number of homeowners who are turning to the Internet to swap properties. The sites — there are about a dozen — allow interested homeowners to browse potential swaps narrowed by giving preferences like price range, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and city of choice.

The homeowner also creates an account with the same information for others to browse.

"It was a wonderful experience for us," Peek said. "To me it's just a great thing with the housing market the way it is right now. It's a great way to hold on to your equity if you have to move."

But some experts say they don't expect online house trading to become a major trend because in most cases it's usually simpler to sell one's home, move to the other city and house hunt.

Swapping also limits choices because the traders have to be swapping regions.

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