Home-buying restrictions are unlikely to ease

China will keep its property-market policy stable in 2014 and strengthen implementation in cities that are seeing soaring housing prices, a senior official said on Tuesday.

Jiang Weixin, minister of housing and urban-rural development, said at a national work conference that the ministry will emphasize "differentiated control" to increase the residential land supply in cities that are facing great upward price pressure - a reference to first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.

Analysts said this indicates that the current control policy will not be changed in 2014, nor is it likely that housing purchase restrictions in major cities will be eased.