Unit approvals fell from 1335 in the three months to October 2017 to just 67 in the three months to the end of January, 2018.

The apparent unwillingness of unit developers to commit to new projects came on the back of the sector's poor financial performance.

It may well suggest a slowing of the frenzy of apartment building which has seen units account for 80 per cent of all new housing approvals in the Territory in recent years.

The median price for units has lagged well behind that of free-standing homes.

There have even been anecdotal reports of apartment owners quitting properties they bought seven and eight years ago for less than what was originally paid.

While that seems almost inconceivable given the stratospheric leap in ACT property values since 2010, it may well be the logical consequence of what appears to have been a deliberate, but misguided, attempt by the former Land Development Agency to steer Canberrans into a housing style many didn't want.

Houses, by contrast, have gone through the roof. The median price for a free-standing home in the ACT in 2014 was $537,500. It had reached $723,299 by last June and has been climbing steadily ever since.

It is now almost exactly three years since the Master Builders' Association's Marc Roland accused the ACT Government of indulging in "social engineering" with its apartment push.

"Since Jon Stanhope ceased to be chief minister successive ACT Governments have stopped focusing on providing free-standing accommodation for first home buyers," he told Fairfax in February, 2015. "Within the space of less than a third of a generation, Canberra first home buyers have been stripped of choice".

In 2000 units and apartments made up 27.9 per cent of all properties sold in the ACT and, on average, sold for 86 per cent of the price of a house.

By 2014 they made up almost 40 per cent of all properties sold. Their relative value had fallen to 78 per cent of the price of a house.

By the end of the June quarter last year the gap had widened further. House prices had jumped by 3.9 per cent while unit prices fell by 2.9 per cent to an eight year low.

A failure to provide properties targeted at the needs of a "baby boomer" generation looking to downsize but still wanting a small garden, a reluctance by many to buy into body corporate politics, and well-founded concerns about the quality of some of the apartment blocks coming to the market have all played a part in recent events.

The best intentions of a well-meaning government, which arguably genuinely wanted to shift people from "land hungry" traditional housing into more efficient accommodations, appear to be facing some resistance.

We have already seen how, in the absence of affordable houses in Canberra, more and more families are moving across the border to developments at Googong and Murrumbateman rather settle for a unit.

This trend will only accelerate unless more affordable blocks, of the kind the market is looking for, become available.