Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng on Wednesday said the government will continue with its policies aiming to bring down the prices of the city's new residential apartments.

Han told a municipal congressional meeting that Shanghai will carry on implementing the central government's package of policies, which include mortgage restrictions and limits on the numbers of homes people can own, to cool the property market while increasing land supply and deepening property tax reforms.

The mayor also said Shanghai will build more affordable apartments and public rental houses for the city's low-income families.

China's efforts to cool the red-hot property market paid off in 2011. Nearly 50 out of 70 major Chinese cities had reported monthly decline in the price of new apartments by November, the first decline in three years in the case of many cities.

Shanghai reported the first monthly drop in prices of new residential apartments in October. For the whole of 2011, new residential apartments were sold at an average of 22,432 yuan ($3,532) per square meter, according to estimates by real-estate agents.

(Xinhua News Agency January 11, 2012)