THE Shanghai Municipal Housing Authority will this month start to scrutinize that home-purchase restrictions are enforced in the city as it seeks to ensure the rapid rise in home prices has been curbed.

The authority will selectively check property projects that are currently for sale in the city. Properties that are over-priced, or registering abnormal sales volume, or involving a large proportion of non-local buyers will be targeted in the monitoring.

Meanwhile nearly 80 percent of Chinese banks in Beijing have stopped offering first home buyers a 15 percent discount on their mortgages. Most banks now offer discounts below 10 percent. The situation varies from city to city, China Securities Journal reported yesterday, citing unnamed sources.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank and the Agricultural Bank of China are among lenders which have canceled the discount rate that is offered across the country. CCB told Shanghai Daily that it always adheres to the benchmark lending rate in home loans, but it implied that different rates could be offered depending on the cases and this is decided by loan officers at local branches.

Apart from Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Taiyuan and Sanya have also stopped the rate discount, the newspaper said.Despite efforts to cool property prices in China, home sales rose this summer due to interest rate cuts by the central bank and city-by-city policy adjustments to try and revive local property markets.

沪江英语快讯：房贷利率8.5折，这曾经在坊间流传过一段时间的“好消息”，现在彻底销声匿迹了。9折，这几乎是各大银行首套房贷款可以获得的最低利率折扣，而且即便是想要打9折也不那么容易，因为并不是所有贷款人都能拿到这个优惠 ，基准利率成为普遍执行的利率标准。