FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- With more and more homes on the market sitting for months waiting for a buyer, some homeowners have found a creative way around the slumping housing market, Local 10's Terrell Forney reported.

It's called house swapping. The new method allows homeowners to instantly link up with potential buyers who are willing to trade spaces.

"Things aren't selling and they're not even renting sometimes, but you have to be creative about it," said Charlie Read, who has been unable to sell his Fort Lauderdale home for the past seven months. "I have to go to Atlanta and this property is kind of a hang-on for me."

Read's 1,500-square-foot waterfront property attracted little attention among potential buyers until he hit the Web and found dozens of matchmaker sites that were willing to link people up with a home about the same size and price of their own.

OnlineHouseTrading.com, DomuSwap.com and even Craigslist.org now offer swapping sections that boast, "I'll buy yours if you buy mine."

A person looking to move in or out of state to a new home runs the risk of not being able to sell in a slumping economy, but house swapping allows the seller to be matched up with another person who may be looking to buy and move to the seller's home city.

If one person's home were worth more than the other person's home, then the owner of the lower-priced home would need to make up the difference. A potential buyer would still need financing to cover the cost of the home.

However, some real estate agents believe house swapping is not for everyone.

"The problems I see is matching the home size and price to the other home size and price," said Barbara Marks of Monarch Properties Realty in Hollywood. "In South Florida, our prices are quite a bit above most of the prices around the country."