Today the equivalent package in Throsby will set you back about $620,000; a jump of about a quarter of a million dollars.

The increase, according to the Master Builders Association, is the result of moves by the Territory government, through the Land Development Agency, to maximise returns to the treasury from the sale of land.

Such increases, and the impact they are having on thousands of Canberra families, have prompted former chief minister and affordable housing champion, Jon Stanhope, to call for an inquiry into the LDA.

He, and former high ranking treasury official Khalid Ahmed, say the Barr government has strayed a long way from the Affordable Housing Action Plan adopted in 2007.

They assert the state, as the monopoly provider of building land within the borders of the ACT, is using this position to further its own interests, not those of Canberra families.

The government, to be fair, finds itself in the invidious position of having to come up with more and more revenue to fund services such as health and education, which now consume well over half of the budget.

It has, to date, taken the easy option by manipulating the economic lever that falls most readily to hand, land pricing.

The result is an emerging generation of first home buyers is being hammered with a massive surcharge to fund community services and underwrite the windfall property values enjoyed by those who entered the market a decade and more ago.

Simple logic dictates this is unsustainable. Evidence is emerging the LDA is beginning to price itself out of its own monopoly market.

We have, in recent times, seen the establishment of dormitory suburb subdivisions across the border near Queanbeyan and even as far afield as Murrumbateman and Yass.

With its shift towards smaller block sizes, duplexes and apartment living, the LDA has created a situation where people are willing to trade travel time for a free-standing house on a large enough block of land to accommodate a growing family.

Younger Canberrans are not buying apartments because they want apartments; they are buying them because they are all they can afford.

If Mr Barr, his ministers and the senior management of the LDA truly believe they are doing a good job on affordable housing they have a collective "tin ear" of monumental proportions.

It is almost, if not totally, impossible to find anybody in the private building or real estate sector who would say things are going well.

In the short term, the Stanhope/Ahmed review call makes eminent sense.

In the longer term, the ACT government needs to grow and diversify the Territory's economic base in order to reduce this dangerous dependency on a single revenue stream.