Residents in Xuchang, Henan Province, look at models of a residential complex at a real estate company on December 23, 2012. Photo: CFP

One woman, three marriages, five months. It's a strange equation until you add the missing number: one Beijing household registration, or hukou.

The woman was recently involved in a scheme to help people skirt regulations to buy houses in Beijing, and capitalize on the capital's skyrocketing housing prices - and she is far from alone.

A report by the Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development discovered that this and 16 other similar cases had occurred through two housing agencies in Beijing, an official surnamed Zhang from the commission's press office confirmed to the Global Times on Monday.

Under the capital's current house purchase registration policies, which have been in place since February 2011, non-Beijing hukou holders are not allowed to buy a house in Beijing unless they have a five-year record of consecutive tax payments, as well as the necessary insurance record.

But if a non-local hukou holder marries a person with Beijing hukou, the new family can buy up to two houses in Beijing without these requirements.

This means a new profession has been born. Dubbed in media reports huntuo, or marriage trustees, these people get married without ever really knowing their wife or husband before they divorce.

When asked about the best way to crack down on huntuo, Zhang said that the commission doesn't have the power to solve the problem.

"The people involved in these cases followed legal procedures. All we can do is to make housing agencies follow the rules," she said.

Meanwhile, agencies are raking in profits by arranging these "marriages."

The tip of the iceberg

The problem is a widespread one. The Beijing News recently reported that according to a house-purchasing information network, 11 out of the 17 cases occurred through real estate agency Jinse Shiguang, and six were from another agency, Jinziyan.

The huntuo with the two agencies include both men and women. At Jinse Shiguang, Wang Fang (pseudonym) married and divorced non-Beijing hukou holders aged between 20 to 60 three times between November 2012 and April 2013.

Employees with Jinse Shiguang said that Wang was once their colleague and later quit. Another huntuo, Zhang Li (pseudonym), with the Jinziyan agency, married two men aged between 30 and 40, the Beijing News reported.

The investigation by the commission also found that the two agencies had not followed regulations and had cut corners in their paperwork, and ordered them to correct this behavior and submit reports.

Marriages without love

Intermediaries track down people with Beijing hukou to participate in these schemes, then the "couple" can buy a house as a Beijing-registered family, an insider from Beijing housing industry was quoted by the China National Radio (CNR) as saying on Friday.

Usually these intermediaries earn between 50,000 ($8,138) and 60,000 yuan with 10,000 to 20,000 yuan given to the Beijing hukou holder, the insider said.

Since the housing purchase restriction policies took effect in Beijing in 2011, the house-purchasing information network has identified 50 huntuo, the Legal Mirror, a Beijing-based newspaper, reported.

Pei Li (pseudonym), a Beijing hukou holder, is one of these huntuo. Pei was a senior broker at a housing agency in Beijing and she quit her job soon after she got divorced last year. At the end of last year, she received a phone call from her former colleague Wang Aizhen (pseudonym) from the agency, who said she could earn some money without any cost.

After a one-hour "date" arranged by the agency on January 5, Pei and Xu Changhe, a businessman from out of town, registered a marriage with the local civil affairs bureau, the Beijing News reported.

Wang provided Pei and Xu with an agreement to sign, claiming that Pei would promise to give up the house. Just one month after their marriage, they divorced and never met again. Through the transaction, Pei was paid 30,000 yuan, the report said.

Legal experts say that given the assets involved, these "contracts" are fraught with risk.

"This kind of agreement is invalid. As huntuo marriages follow all the legal procedures, the benefits of both parties are protected by law," Zhang Qianlin, a lawyer in real estate law from the Shanghai-based DeBund Law Offices, told the Global Times on Sunday. "If the Beijing residents want their share of the properties, they have a right to claim them."

As the law doesn't stipulate how many times or how frequently people can get married, huntuo have not violated any laws, Zhang Qianlin said, stressing that while there weren't necessarily legal issues, there certainly were ethical ones.

Bringing the hammer down

Housing agencies involved in shady huntuo transactions face the risk of punishment, Wang Zheng, an official from the commission, told CNR on Friday.

If they are found, they will be barred from the commission's transaction management network, which  means their houses can't be transferred to buyers, Wang said, also indicating that there would be more severe punishments.

The government is also expanding its detection capability. Special software has been installed in the government's purchasing network to detect huntuo, an official from the commission told the Beijing News, noting that a warning message will pop up when one person's ID appears more than three times together with other people's ID.

Housing and urban-rural departments are also cooperating with other departments to create an integrated network that links together seven kinds of identification, including hukou, standard ID and marriage information, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.

Not everyone is convinced that it will work. "It won't stop huntuo. As long as house restriction policies exist, huntuo will have a market because demand will remain," Liu Weiwei, a researcher with the Shanghai-based E-house China R&D Institute, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

"Even though housing agencies that provide huntuo services are unethical, the cost and risk of doing it is low because there are no laws to punish them," Liu said. "The main reason for the problem is that the restrictions  prevent people from buying houses freely, which goes against the market economy."