Straight Trading Properties

[Daniel Shadle]

I have been reading through "How I Turned $1,000 into a Million in Real Estate in My Spare Time" by William Nickerson and have been curious about his strategy. He trades up houses in a straight swap, equity for equity. I have been around the forums for about a year and have read about 15 books on investing and have never heard of this done. The closest equivalent that I know of is a 1031 exchange. I know the book is fairly dated, so are these trades still done and how common are they?