“It’s such a shame that in order to supply more housing, housing has to become even more unaffordable,” Traders in Purple director Charles Daoud said.

“It was the great Aussie dream of the quarter-acre backyard, it’s now the great Australian conundrum.”

The property and construction group won the tender and filed plans this week to build 113 apartments at Padstow, 27km south-west of the Sydney CBD, as new planning controls paved the way for the suburb’s revitalisation.