Enormous parcels of industrial land across Melbourne’s maligned western suburbs are in hot demand as developers snaffle them up in a bid transform them into housing havens for the middle class.

Enticed by cheaper land prices and less onerous planning restrictions, international and local development giants increasingly have their sights set on blue-collar suburbs within 15 kilometres of the CBD.

Melbourne-based Pace Development Group dropped $34 million on a 20-hectare former quarry site in Sunshine North last year, and this week secured a permit to build 250 townhouses and apartments on a stretch along the Maribyrnong River.

A few kilometres to the south, Stockland has 420 townhouses planned for its 11-hectare Braybrook site, purchased last year for $60 million.

In neighbouring St Albans, construction has started on the first stages of a 6.8-hectare site slated for 250 townhouses and dwellings.

Another large development is expected in Albanvale, after an offshore developer last year paid $11.67 million for an 8.8-hectare site that was offloaded by VicRoads and zoned residential.

Commercial and industrial real estate agency Savills has witnessed a shift in demand off the back of housing affordability concerns, with developers desperately seeking land that can be used to deliver houses well below the city’s median price of $914,000.

“Where we used to have only a handful of developers willing to buy major infill sites in the west, we now receive literally 10 to 20 separate offers for the sites we sell, such is the demand from developers,” Savills state director Clinton Baxter said.

Mr Baxter said middle ring suburbs in the west had become a development hot spot by virtue of cheaper land, large landholdings and “easier construction”.

Brimbank, Maribyrnong and Wyndham are considered less restrictive than other metropolitan councils, largely because they have fewer heritage-listed precincts and less community opposition to low-rise and medium-density developments.

Cedar Woods chief executive Patrick Archer, heading up the townhouse development in St Albans, said town planning departments in the west encouraged good development because it bolstered local economies.

“Some of the areas on the other side of town in the eastern suburbs, they don’t like development and they do what they can to stop it,” Mr Archer said.

Pace development manager Georgia Willis said development application processes, including third-party appeals, were less contentious and less political in the western suburbs.

“As far as planning processes and outcomes, they are a little less onerous from a development point of view,” she said.

Pace was searching for landholdings in Brimbank for three years before they nabbed the Sunshine North quarry site.

Ms Willis said the area was particularly attractive because Sunshine had been identified by the federal government as one of seven employment and innovation clusters in Melbourne, and would be targeted for strategic infrastructure investment and job growth opportunities.

Infill land for major residential subdivisions is a “finite commodity”, according to Julian White, commercial real estate firm CBRE’s state director.

But he said he knew of large tracks of land that had the potential to be rezoned for residential development in areas such as Brooklyn.

“These sites however are not freely unlocked and whenever these sites have been presented to the market in recent times, they have always been popular.”