With prices set to start around $800,000 for the smallest lots closest to the village, Woodbury Ridge Estate will be a premium market offering for buyers seeking a "high quality rural residential lifestyle", say the developers.

Prices in Sutton, just a few minutes from the ACT border, already have a median of $1.8 million based on 11 sales in the past 12 months.

Properties in Sutton have risen in value by 24 per cent in the past 12 months, mostly as a result of buyers departing the Canberra market and seeking out larger blocks and small acreages in close proximity to the ACT.

Capital Plus One is the exclusive sales agent for the development, with investment from Ginninderry developer David Maxwell and the Kenyon family.

The estate will be the first significant greenfields redevelopment in the Sutton area for decades and will almost double the size of the existing village just over the ACT border.

The developers will manage the rollout of the civil works and the staged release of lots from the 178-hectare former grazing land bordered by the Yass River, Sutton Rd, Guises Street on the Sutton village border and the old Federal Highway.

There will be 10 blocks, each around half a hectare in size, in the area known as the village, 32 on the "hilltop", many with views out across the Yass River valley to the north, and 11 on the "riverside" closer to the Yass River.

The balance will be large "stewardship" blocks of 20 hectares or more which will have well-defined building envelopes and biodiversity caveats to protect the local ecology. A 1.1 hectare communal park with barbecues, a playground and picnic facilities will be built inside the estate closest to the village blocks.

Since the 1860s, the property originally had been part of the Cartwright family's significant regional grazing landholding known as Woodbury, which once spread across the river and into Wamboin.

Cut off by the construction of the Federal Highway, this parcel of land was economically unviable for farming and grazing land. The owners, Bill and Fay Cartwright, who both passed away in recent years, had expressed their wish that the land be used to complement and enhance the Sutton village, and left it to their three children Robyn, Peter and Paul.

Concept planning on how to deliver this began some eight years ago, with the development application approved by the Yass Valley Council in late April.

Initial studies identified the land as of high ecological value, so the manner in which the property was to be developed followed guidelines established under the NSW Biodiversity Conservation Act. Large remnant gum trees across the land parcel will be kept and protected.

Capital Plus One's chief executive David Maxwell, also a director of the Riverview group developing Ginninderry on Canberra's western boundary, said that the Cartwright family expressed the wish that the Woodbury property be developed in a sensitive manner.

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"The stewardship blocks are those bigger sites which have the highest ecological value and the future landowners will be required to ensure they protect those values," he said.

"We've worked hard to provide a mix of different blocks to appeal to a range of buyers, from those who want to live close to Sutton village and what it offers, and those who want the bigger lifestyle blocks.

"I suspect we'll get a proportion of tree-changers but given this location is so close to Canberra, there will be those who just want more space and still live within a very easy commuting distance into town."

A loop road, with two entrances off Guises St, will provide access around the estate, connected to two cul-de-sacs. Three phase power will be connected to all blocks but water will have to be harvested from the owners' rooftops, supplemented by a single communal bore drawing non-potable water from a single large storage tank for irrigation.

Purchasers would need to have their own self-contained sewage systems within their blocks.

Sales will start in August, with the civil works beginning in November.

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