Beijing municipal government Wednesday issued new rules limiting the number of homes each family can buy as the government steps up efforts to cool the property market.

The new rules prohibit new home purchases by Beijing families who own two or more apartments and non-Beijing registered families who own at least one apartment.

Non-Beijing registered families who have no residence permit or documents certifying that members of the family have been paying social security or income tax for five straight years are also banned from buying apartments.

Beijing families who own just one apartment can only buy one more apartment, according to the new rules.

The rules, issued shortly after the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, seem to reinforce regulations that limited each Beijing family to buying only one extra apartment from April last year.

The Chinese government has been stepping up measures to rein in soaring housing prices that have become a major source of public complaints in the country's biggest cities.

But property prices have remained stubbornly high. Home prices in 70 major Chinese cities rose 0.3 percent month on month in December last year, and 6.4 percent year on year, after a group of measures failed to put a brake on the surging prices, government statistics showed.

The central government last month raised the minimum down-payment for second home purchases from 50 percent to 60 percent of the property's value and approved the launch of property taxes in Shanghai and Chongqing.