A potential homebuyer stands in front of a housing model at a real estate sales outlet in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province. Photo: CFP

Beijing's municipal government will suspend approvals until the end of this year for sales of new apartment projects that are expected to sell at more than 40,000 yuan ($6,552) per square meter, in a new effort to ­suppress soaring home prices, a media report said Tuesday.

The Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (BMCHURD) called over 30 real ­estate developers together Friday and informed them that any projects selling at prices higher than the upper limit would not get pre-sale certificates from the housing authority, the 21st Century Business Herald newspaper reported, citing sources from the BMCHURD. 

Efforts by the Global Times to ­contact the BMCHURD were not successful by press time Tuesday.

"The Beijing local government has no better choice currently than to take this administrative measure, as home prices have seen rampant growth since the beginning of this year," Chen Baocun, director of the real ­estate department with the Asian-Pacific City research institute, told the Global Times Tuesday.

The city saw prices per square meter of ­newly built ­apartments rise by 20.6 percent year-on-year in September, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

This is the latest effort by the ­Beijing local government to limit home price rises, following the release of seven measures on October 23 to rein in the property market.

The seven measures included offering 20,000 units of low-cost homes, a new type of affordable housing, which cannot be resold in the first five years after being purchased; and if the homes are resold after five years, 30 percent of the profit will belong to the government.

Developers have recently shown considerable enthusiasm for purchasing land, largely thanks to the ­continuing rise in home prices.

On Monday, eight areas of land in Beijing for residential use were sold at auction for a total price of 8.77 billion yuan, 26 percent higher than the price pre-offered by the local land authority, according to data from property ­brokerage Homelink.

Among the eight areas of land, 72.6 percent of the total area will be used for construction of low-cost homes, the Homelink data showed.

"The auction results indicated that developers have a lot of confidence in the outlook for the real estate market, even though they have to build low-cost homes on such a large area," Zhang Xu, an analyst with Homelink, told the Global Times via e-mail.

Chen said the local government's previous efforts to curb home prices have had a limited effect, and long-term strategies such as land reform are needed to resolve the issue.

The 383 reform plan, which was proposed by the Development ­Research Center of the State Council on October 26, suggested allocation of more collectively owned rural land for construction of residences.

This led to market rumors that the government may legalize homes with limited property rights that are built unlawfully on collectively owned land, and the sales price of homes with limited property rights in Beijing rose by around 1,000 yuan per square meter within one week, according to media reports.

But Chen said legalization of homes with limited property rights is unlikely in the short term, as it is "too complicated."