CHONGQING - Southwest China's municipality of Chongqing has ascertained that there will be more than 13,000 houses subject to property taxation this year, according to the local land resources and house management authority.

Property taxes on the 13,000 houses will amount to more than 100 million yuan ($15.1 million).

The number of taxable houses and the amount of the taxes are in line with the city's house sales volume from the first quarter of this year, according to the local authorities.

The Chinese government has repeatedly stressed its efforts to cool down its runaway property market and adopted various measures to curb rising property prices, including restricting residents in major cities from buying second or third homes, requiring higher down payments for mortgages and instituting new property taxes in the cities of Chongqing and Shanghai.

Chongqing began to levy a property tax on private homes on Jan 28, 2011.

In the first quarter of this year, the city saw sales of 8.99 million square meters of commercial housing, a rise of 17.4 percent over the same period from last year.

The growth rate was 0.7 percentage points lower than the rate from January and February.

Sales of properties with floor space of more than 140 square meters amounted to 668,000 square meters, down 13.6 percent year-on-year. Sales of villas and high-end apartments amounted to 238,800 square meters, down 52.7 percent.