It was a small admission from the NSW government but it spoke volumes about its changing view of housing affordability.

“First-home buyers often face strong competition for off-the-plan properties from investors,” the budget statement read.

For first-home buyers struggling to crack the market, this is nothing more than a common sense statement.

But it marks one of the first times this state government has directly admitted that investors are a significant part of the problem.

Repeatedly the government’s line has been that fixing affordability is all about increasing supply. Now it seems it is also about curbing investor demand.

And it has directly put the policy into place to tackle it.

As announced in the budget, investors will no longer be able to defer payment of stamp duty on off-the-plan properties. That is, they’ll have to pay the tax upfront, rather than wait up to 12 months to cough up the cash.

Although the shift in ideology is welcome, this policy is simply too little, too late.

Rampant speculation in the housing market by a record number of investors is one the the key reasons why Sydney’s median house price has almost doubled over the past five years to $1.15 million.

And the reality is this small stamp duty tweak is unlikely to help “counter” further demand from investors.

However, it is easy to understand why such a policy would be attractive to the government – it will now receive a decent portion of its future stamp duty revenue a year earlier.

In 2017-18, this change is expected to drive an additional $380 million in revenue. In 2018-19, this will drop to $110 million and for 2019-20, an election year, it will have slowed to an additional $20 million each year.

Unlike first-home buyers who have no equity, investors are more likely to have sufficient means to pay for stamp duty upfront.

If the government really wants to tackle the pressure imposed on first-home buyers by investors, it will need take a much stronger stance.

One way would be to mandate a maximum percentage of properties in a new development that investors are able to purchase. This is already the rule for foreign investors – who are set to be limited to 50 per cent of new developments.

Now that the government has admitted the issue exists, it has to be ready to fix it. But it seems likely it will continue to fall back on a supply-side solution, which is still the cornerstone of the budget.

In fact, “supply” is mentioned more than 20 times in the first budget statement while property investors are mentioned only twice. One of those mentions is in reference to foreign investors.

As NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet said himself, the state government believes the big answer to affordability is still to “provide more homes”.