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Right now I'm feeling very inadequate. You know! It's that feeling you get when you've just let someone down. As Mortgage Professionals we have all experienced it. I just couldn't help. Here's the whole agonizing story from the very beginning...

Last Summer, Canadian Kyle MacDonald, an unemployed writer, set off on a quest to turn one red paper clip into a house, by swapping it for items that were bigger or better.

Based on a game called Bigger and Better (I don't remember that one when I was a kid) that he played as a child, MacDonald decided he would use his creativity and the power of the internet to trade up from one item to another, starting only with one red paperclip, to ultimately trade for his goal...a house.

MacDonald set up a web blog to trade his one red paperclip on July 12th, 2005 and he made his first trade for a pen (in the shape of a fish) on July 14.Well, it took Kyle 14 internet trades, and exactly one year to move from the red paper clip to a house on Main Street in the tiny town of Kipling in Saskatchewan province, Canada - a place he has never been to before.

Kyle's initial trade swapped the paperclip for a pen in Vancouver, the pen became a doorknob, which was traded for a portable barbecue, then swapped for a generator, to become a full beer keg and neon Budweiser sign in New York. A snowmobile followed which was then traded for a trip to Yahn in the Canadian Rockies? He swapped that for a 1995 Ford Van which was then traded for a recording contract which became one year rent-free in Phoenix. An afternoon with Alice Cooper followed, then a snow globe, a Hollywood movie role in Donna on Demand for a two-storey, three-bedroom, 1920s farmhouse on the town's Main Street in rural Kipling.

Kyle's new home community, which is named after the famed British author and poet Rudyard Kipling and is home to New York Times list award-winning romance novelist Mary Balogh, seems like the ideal place to crank out his life's story, which is scheduled to hit store shelves next summer. He successfully parlayed this whole adventure into a book deal with Random House and a movie deal with DreamWorks.

You can go to Google maps and key in the address: 530 Main Street, Kipling Saskatchewan to view the property.

His book, to be published in four different languages, will contain new material about his bartering experience. He said he was approached by about 40 book publishers and 50 production companies who were interested in his story.

Again, I feel terrible that as a Mortgage Professional, I couldn't help Kyle secure a home mortgage. Of course, being unemployed didn't help much. To tell the truth, I really don't originate mortgages in Canada. Plus, all of my lenders had already reached their quota and all of their free mortgages had already been allocated.

Congratulations Kyle MacDonald on a job well done. Quite a return on investment...one red paperclip for a house. Only in America...well actually, North America!