"Nick Geo-," she says, catching the mistake just in time. "Nick Georgalis."

Mr Georgalis approaches the microphone, looks out at the crowd gathered to mark the launch of the Tryst high-rise apartment complex and a sales centre that looks more like a luxury car dealer's showroom, and grins.

"Mr Geocon," he quips, to laughter from the crowd. "That's alright, I'm used to being called that."

In the boardroom at Geocon's Fyshwick headquarters a week later, the company's founder and managing director speaks with the same confidence and exuberance with which he charms a room full of clients and VIPs.

He answers questions without a moment's hesitation and puts forward a passionate pitch for his home city when he sits down with the Sunday Canberra Times to discuss his role in leading Geocon to become the dominant player in the capital's housing market.

The born and bred Canberran is a fast talker and a natural salesman, keen to talk up the role Geocon is playing in transforming not only the city's skyline, but its mentality.

"[Canberra has] grown from a city where people wanted to move away to a city that people want to move to," Mr Georgalis says.

"Canberra’s always had a problem attracting people to it because it didn’t come with a lifestyle. Now, that changes."

Mr Georgalis started Geocon in 2007, initially building freestanding homes in the Canberra suburbs. Since then it has become a multi-unit specialist and is now ranked the fourth-largest residential multi-unit builder/developer in Australia.

The company has an annual turnover of more than $400 million and more than 250 staff helping deliver its bulging portfolio of hotels and most notably, high-rise complexes dominated by apartments.

But the company's most ambitious projects, like the $1 billion Belconnen Republic precinct that will include Canberra's tallest building, a 113-metre tall residential tower, are still to come. Mr Georgalis says Geocon will start work on more than 2000 units this financial year, ramping up from 906 in 2017-18.

While many in the capital believe Geocon is pushing boundaries, Mr Georgalis says that's a matter of perspective and with the light rail project and precincts like Republic and the Kingston Arts Precinct on the way, joining the existing international airport, Canberra is starting to resemble major international cities.

"If you picked a city like Sydney or Melbourne or Hong Kong or wherever, and someone looked at the density of our projects, they’re actually low-rise and not very dense projects," he says.

"So it’s really a matter of perspective.

"The reality is we take an international view and a national view on things and we don’t try and size ourselves up to anyone in the ACT."

Geocon is making waves outside Canberra, striking a deal with major players including international investment bank Goldman Sachs, which is funding the fast-tracked Republic development, and partnering with powerful Sydney investor and money lender Mark Bouris.

But the company remains focused solely on the ACT region, and Mr Georgalis says he has no plans to change that any time soon, declaring that Geocon won't look to build outside the region for at least another five years.

"We understand the ACT market intimately," he says.

"There’s no need for the group to expand outside of the ACT because we want to be very good at what we deliver here.

"We actually think that people have underestimated how much Canberra is really going to grow."

Mr Georgalis says Geocon's analysts believe the ACT's population will hit 600,000 by 2030, sooner than governments and economists expect.

He says the population boom will only exacerbate the "structural undersupply" that led him to take Geocon down the path of specialising in high-density multi-unit projects in the city and town centres, with the company having started out building townhouses in the suburbs.

He says the market is crying out for apartments in the midst of a "dangerously low" vacancy rate - assessed by SQM Research as being 0.6 per cent in Canberra - dismissing any suggestions there are too many apartments appearing too quickly on the city's skyline.

With rental yields among the highest in Australia, Mr Georgalis says the best investment in the country is in our own backyard.

"A lot of people don’t really realise what’s happening in Canberra and realise the demand for property," Mr Georgalis says.

"They might see high-rises being built, and more than ever, but they’re all sold.

"I’ll use the example of our Grand Central Towers, [which has] 430 apartments.

"We’ve just started demolition on a 20-month program and there’s only about 50 units left to sell out of 430."

While he's a born and bred Canberran, no one could accuse Mr Georgalis of living in a bubble.

He gets up early every day to read newspapers and stay up to date with world events, and offers his views on topics including New Zealand's ban on foreign buyers purchasing property - a decision he finds baffling because fewer investors means fewer properties are available to rent.

He also regularly compares his vision for parts of Canberra to other cities, likening the Kingston Foreshore to Sydney's Darling Harbour, Belconnen to the Parramatta CBD, and Braddon to Surry Hills in Sydney or St Kilda in Melbourne.

"All of a sudden it’s got this likeness of major international cities," Mr Georgalis says of Canberra, praising the international airport and light rail project, which he says have put the city on the map for global investors.

So while Canberra's newest number plates would have you believe we live in "the bush capital", Mr Georgalis sees a modern metropolis that is anything but.

"When people hear the words 'bush capital', they would think you'd see Akubras, R. M. Williams, belt buckles and cowboy boots because that's what the bush is in Australia," he laughs.

"If you go to places like Mt Isa and Townsville, that are bush cities, that's what [the phrase] represents.

"The Australian bush isn't Canberra, the Australian bush is something very different.

"[The phrase 'bush capital'] is something people may have liked to have used to tone down people delivering ambitious projects."

If there's one word to describe Mr Georgalis and Geocon, it's ambitious.

But he's keen to point out that this story is not just about him or his company.

It's also about Canberra, a place the likes of Goldman Sachs and Mark Bouris have put their faith in as a sophisticated, emerging city.

Mr Bouris, a self-described "fairly conservative investor", doesn't mince his words.

"You are no longer the bush capital," Mr Bouris told the launch of Geocon's High Society development in July.

"Canberra's evolved. Canberra's not boring. Canberra's f---ing cool. There, I said it."