BEIJING - Authorities in Beijing rejected the applications of more than 14,000 families who hoped to buy apartments last year amid the city's efforts to tighten the property market in order to curb out-of-control housing prices, local officials said Monday.

Officials with the city's housing and urban-rural construction committee said "speculative demands" in the property market have been squeezed out, as more than 90 percent of approved home buyers in the city are first-time buyers.

Last February, Beijing banned locally-registered families from buying a third apartment and non-locally-registered families from buying a second apartment in a bid to stifle "speculative demands" that economists feared would result in dangerous "bubbles" in the property market as prices soared to unreasonable highs.

The property sector has cooled since the purchasing limit, as well as higher lending rates, higher down payment requirements for second homes and a ban on mortgage loans on third homes, took effect.

Beijing will continue the market tightening efforts this year to strictly scrutinize the qualifications of aspiring home buyers, officials said.

The Chinese capital is at the forefront of the country's property market regulation. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said in March that the government will not weaken it efforts to regulate housing prices, which he then considered still "far from falling to a reasonable level."