The self-employed mother of two is living in cramped conditions with her mother and two daughters. She drives from Farrer to Gungahlin and back twice a day to take the girls, one aged 12 and one aged seven, to school.

"I had hoped we would have been in our new home long before this," she said.

Instead she is still waiting for her block to dry out enough for her builder, Matthew Smith of Gold Ruby Homes, to pour the slab. Permission to build did not come through until this month.

"There is no way we are going to be in until some time in the first quarter of 2017," she said.

Mr Smith, who freely admits to having been pinged by the LDA in the past for land banking, can't understand why he wasn't allowed to start building on the Abbott block shortly after physical completion of the area last November.

He has shown Fairfax a video showing the block was build ready then.

This meant nothing, Land Development Agency chief executive David Dawes said.

"A subdivision can't be opened to the public just because it looks finished," Mr Dawes said. "There are many aspects that are ongoing. These can include street light installation, landscaping and levelling and surveying of blocks.

"The subdivision also needs to achieve operational acceptance from Transport Canberra and City Services."

Ms Abbott bought her block off another builder who had purchased it at the original Moncrieff land release but, after seven or eight months, couldn't afford to wait any longer for it to be build ready.

Mr Smith, who has seen Gold Ruby's turnover plummet from $16 million a year three or four years ago to less than $2 million over the past 18 months, said the LDA's inability to deliver land in a timely fashion had sent the local construction industry through the valley of death.

Then MBA ACT deputy chief executive director, Jerry Howard, now a consultant to the LDA, warned of this in early 2015, citing an MBA policy document that stated: "If the land release program contracts, the government runs the risk of a near shutdown of Canberra's building industry and an escalation in the price of land."

Mr Smith said this had come to pass.

"We have waited eight months while this was ready without having land to generate progress payments or income for us to live on," he said.

"At least one contractor went into receivership and builders and suppliers have gone bankrupt or close to it because they don'€™t have a constant supply of land that is ready to build on now."

Had he had not banked land, building up a stock of about 17 or 18 blocks at the beginning of 2015, Gold Ruby would have gone under.

"We have been living off those blocks to keep ourselves afloat. We only have one block left that is not under development – and that is because it took them six months to knock back a development application."

Mr Dawes said the delays experienced by Ms Abbott and others could have been much worse.

"Due to accelerated construction times, blocks in Moncrieff were generally made available between one month and 18 months ahead of their original contract date ranges," he said.

Former ACT chief minister Jon Stanhope has repeatedly accused his successors of dropping the ball on affordable housing by restricting access to land.

Under the Housing Affordability Action Plan he introduced 10 years ago, the LDA was committed to the creation of a permanent land bank of 1000 build-ready house blocks ready for over the counter sale.

"That target has never been met," he said last November (2015). "There is not even a single block of [build-ready] land available across the counter today."