Welcome to the latest mainland trend: getting divorced, or appearing to, in order to save money on buying a second or third home.

With real estate prices still soaring and regulations enacted in April to increase the down payment needed on second and third homes while raising mortgage rates, couples have been taking advantage of one of the loopholes in the system.

It says that two unmarried people are able to buy two properties for more favourable prices, but a married couple would incur much higher costs.

Since April, households across the country have been required to put down 50 per cent of the overall cost of their second and third homes as a down payment, up from 40 per cent, and banks have been told to fix mortgage rates at no less than 10 per cent higher than the benchmark interest rate.

This can raise the overall cost of a property by tens or hundreds of thousands of yuan, yet by simply getting a divorce, a husband and wife are considered two independent households.

"Such a 'fake' divorce may save the second-home buyer hundreds of thousands of yuan, so why not do it?" said Chen Ping , a real estate agent in Changsha, Hunan, in a recent Xinhua article.

In the same article, one married couple estimated that they could reduce the down payment needed to buy a second home from 140,000 yuan to 100,000 yuan, while potentially saving 100,000 yuan in mortgage fees over the life of the mortgage.

"The house we want to buy is 720,000 yuan," the husband, Li Guoliang , 42, told the news agency. "After we get divorced, my wife will claim our house so that I can apply for a mortgage as a first-home buyer since I don't have a house under my name. And we will remarry after that," he said, adding that he got the idea from a real estate agency.

Divorce, long considered a taboo on the mainland, is on the rise. According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, 848,000 couples registered for divorces in the first half of this year, up nearly 10 per cent year on year. Finding out the exact number of these that are linked to real estate, likely to be a very small number, is impossible, however, with few couples willing to openly admit to the practice.

"We simply don't know the exact number because we can't tell whether the purpose of a couple getting divorced is to dodge the rules that the central government issued to curb property speculation, or unhappiness in their relationship," said Professor Cao Jianhai , director of the investment and market research office at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Industrial Economics.

An informal survey conducted by the Shanghai Financial News in May suggested that as many as 40 per cent of respondents would consider a tactical divorce if the savings were high enough. One reason is that although the regulations were put in place to curb property speculation, there is a sceptical view of the strategy's effect.

"I think the reason couples choose to divorce in order to buy property is that they don't expect housing prices to go down in the short term. They don't believe the government measures will have an effect on housing prices," Cao said. The very fact that further regulations - such as those released early last month in Shanghai that limit city households to one additional residential property - are needed seems to testify that officials had not done enough to combat the continual rise in real estate prices.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, property prices in 70 major Chinese cities rose 9.1 per cent year on year in September, though this was the slowest growth rate of any month this year. Even so, prices still rose 0.5 per cent from August.

But Cao said those who are considering getting a quick divorce should be cautious that the tactic does not backfire because the divorce might give an unhappy spouse a convenient exit.

"I think the government will eventually try to stop this because these `fake' divorces may actually threaten social stability," Cao said.

"I mean, a couple could explain wanting to buy multiple properties as the reason for getting a divorce - that they will get married again after things are done - but many couples may never remarry because one of them actually wanted to end it."

For those not wanting to risk the repercussions on their marriage of getting a legal divorce, a fake divorce certificate is always an option.

According to the fake certificate salesman, the divorce certificates his company offers look real to all intents and purposes, the only difference being that the serial numbers are fake. "The serial number is picked randomly; otherwise, all of the elements on the certificate are real for you," he said.

Because of all the circumvention through real and faked means, media reports have suggested there is discussion about tightening up the system, with some experts suggesting greater co-operation between civil authorities and housing authorities.

In the meantime, however, the practice will continue.

"The number of people coming to see us is on the rise," the salesman said. "We are getting at least a dozen people a day lately.

"Our customers are anywhere from 30 to 70 years old. I don't know what they do for a living and why they want fake divorces; all of this is kept confidential, and we don't really care, either."