By AARON BACK And JOY C. SHAW

BEIJING—China's Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development said Tuesday it has tightened regulations covering presales of developments by property firms, the latest in a series of measures to stem speculative investments and ease the rise in home prices.

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Reuters

There are worries of a property-price bubble in wealthy cities such as Shanghai, the site of this residential compound.

The measures come amid increasing concerns Chinese property prices are in an unsustainable bubble, especially in wealthy coastal cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. They follow data last week showing property prices in 70 of China's large and medium-sized cities rose 11.7% in March from a year earlier, the fastest pace since China began issuing the data in July 2005.

The ministry said in a notice on its Web site that developers aren't allowed to receive down payments for unfinished properties unless they have obtained government approval to pre-sell the properties.

On Thursday, China's State Council, or cabinet, set a 30% minimum down payment for purchases of first homes larger than 90 square meters, and raised the down payment requirement for second homes for the second time this year, to 50% from 40%.

Then on Saturday the State Council unveiled further measures, which included allowing banks to refuse additional mortgages for home buyers who already own two or more properties. For those that are permitted to buy third homes, banks should "greatly increase" minimum down payments and mortgage rates, the State Council said.

Under Tuesday's new regulations from the housing ministry, developers that have obtained approval to pre-sell a project must publicize the prices of each unit in the development within 10 days of gaining approval.

The ministry said it has discovered that some developers were hoarding property to illegally push up prices, and added that it will punish developers that don't follow the rules or that manipulate the pre-sale process to create the illusion of tight supply.

Also Tuesday, the country's central bank, the People's Bank of China, published a breakdown of first-quarter lending by financial institutions, which revealed a surge of loans to the property sector.

Financial institutions issued 845.7 billion yuan of new yuan-denominated loans to the property sector in the first three months of the year, and the total stock of outstanding loans to the sector rose 44.3% from a year earlier, the PBOC said in a statement. That growth was 6.2 percentage points faster than growth in the first quarter of last year. Loans to developers rose 31.1%, and loans to individual homebuyers rose 53.4%, the PBOC said.

The rapid rise in property loans compares with a 21.8% rise in overall yuan-denominated loans outstanding at the end of March, according to figures announced earlier by the PBOC.

Write to Aaron Back at aaron.back@dowjones.com and Joy C. Shaw a