The Shenzhen Municipal Government plans to impose a ceiling on the percentage of luxury houses to be built in every new housing project next year in the latest move to curb the city's rising housing prices, a senior land official said Tuesday.

"We plan to write down in each land sale contract that 80-90 percent of the houses to be built on the land lot should be ordinary homes," said Huang Ting, vice director general of the municipal land and housing bureau.

An ordinary home refers to an apartment with a floor space of less than 144 square meters. A flat with a floor space of 144 square meters or above is defined as a luxury home, according to the government regulations.

The average housing price of Shenzhen was 6,958 yuan (US$858) per square meter in the first 11 months of the year, up 17.3 percent from the same period last year. Luxury houses have been blamed as an important reason for the rise in the city's overall home prices.

In the first 11 months of the year, 11.37 percent of the apartments sold in Shenzhen were luxury ones, and their average price rose 26.16 percent from the same period last year. The average price of ordinary homes, meanwhile, rose by 10.82 percent.

"Luxury houses have pushed up prices of ordinary homes," said Huang, adding that many developers prefer to develop luxury houses for higher profits.

(Shenzhen Daily December 29, 2005)