Housing affordability in Canberra: ACT's cheapest homes in Tuggeranong, Belconnen

But neither is Jag Khan's mortgage, and if her three-bedroom, one-bathroom Kambah home gets too full, she'll know it's time to have a belongings cull.

"We were limited because my husband and I didn't want to buy an expensive home - it was more important to us to maintain a certain lifestyle like me working part-time," Mrs Khan said.

"This is the kind of house where I can work part-time, my husband earned about $55,000 last year, and we're living a good life."

Dwellings in Tuggeranong ranked as the cheapest in the ACT in CoreLogic's latest housing report. Gungahlin and Belconnen were not far behind.

Homes in the inner south of Canberra were by far the most expensive according to the property information provider's unit price to income ratio.

Mrs Khan said buying her first home was a matter of managing expectations.

"A lot of my friends had already purchased homes but a lot of them had much higher incomes but consequently they overextended themselves," she said.

"We found a home that was a better buy for me.

"I grew up in Tuggeranong but I didn't want to go back there ... (but) I'd rather be in a small home than a slave to my mortgage."

Australian National University Centre for Social Research and Methods Associate Professor Ben Phillips said Canberra's housing was affordable - "It depends on where your expectations are of where you want to live.

"There's more affordable options in, say, Belconnen is relatively affordable, Tuggeranong is relatively affordable, these just aren't the sexy areas of town that everybody wants to live in.

"Somewhere like Belconnen, you're still only 10 to 15 minutes from the city so it's not the end of the world."

Housing Industry Association ACT/Southern NSW executive director Greg Weller said affordable developments in Canberra's north and west were promising but said the south needed another look-in.

"There's not a lot of building activity in the south of Canberra and that's an area for the economies of the south of Canberra, and for housing affordability there that needs to be on the agenda to look at what opportunities there are to encourage building in that part of city," he said.

Mr Weller said high-density developments also provided opportunities for first-home buyers but that shouldn't mean people were forced into units or apartments.

"It just shouldn't be a question of either or, that the focus is on higher-density, inner-city living at the expense of the release of blocks in greenfield sites," he said.

"It's a question of making sure there is adequate supply of all sorts of housing to meet community demand."

An ACT government spokewoman said land releases were determined by the annually-reviewed land release program.

"The locations of land release sites are determined by a number of factors including practical considerations such as availability of land, time needed for development and environmental concerns," she said.

"While the Land Release Program determines what government owned land is to be released for development, and the Territory Plan determines what type of development is allowed on those sites, the types of buildings developed on those sites are ultimately a matter for the developers who purchase the land. It is in the best interests of developers to produce properties that people want to own or use."