Beijing Times, February 21, 2011

To contain soaring real estate prices, Beijing recently imposed a package of rules, which put various limits on the qualification of buyers. According to the rules, to buy a house, a non-Beijing resident will have to provide record of tax and social securities fee payment in the city for minimum five years. The package also provides that each Beijing resident can buy no more than two houses and for a non-resident, one.

To circumvent the new regulation, some of the most undaunted investors came up with ways to exploit the legal pitfalls: among others, "fake marriage" and "fake divorce". It is believed that a Beijng resident could make a quick fortune of 400,000 to 600,000 yuan in commissions simply by marrying and divorcing non-resident real estate buyers four to six times in a year.

In today's Beijing Times report, a judge urges people to think twice before carry things out, citing a case in which one of those schemes backfired: Mr. Zhang and Miss Wong were once a happily married couple. They were lucky enough to own two apartments but still wanted a third. They figured that the only way to do that was through a divorce. Everything went smoothly as they planed: Their joint property was split and Mr. Zhang received the two apartments they owned; Miss Wong, technically single and without a house, was now qualified to buy a new house. But as it turned out, shortly after the divorce, the not-so-loyal husband, was gone with the wind with the proceeds from selling their houses.