A bold move by the government of Shijiazhuang to boost the property market has been called off by a higher-level administration, Xinhua News Agency reported Thursday.

A housing regulation official from Shijiazhuang, the capital of northern Hebei province confirmed to Xinhua that the government had drafted a policy to fine-tune the housing market, but this was not approved by a higher-level administration. The report did not elaborate whether it was canceled by Hebei province or the central government.

Last week, a newspaper in Hebei reported that purchases of third homes would be allowed if the per capita housing space of each family member was less than 30.6 square meters.

This contradicted Beijing's strict limit on the number of homes a family can buy.

The news came a day after China's real estate regulator reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining the current restrictions on property sales.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development denied recent domestic media reports claiming that the government was planning to relax its real estate policy, emphasizing that policies targeting real estate speculation and inflation would remain in place.