As Melbourne races towards a population of more than eight million within just two decades, experts have warned that much of the new property construction will not meet the needs of its residents.

The city’s construction boom has increasingly been concentrated on apartment towers, but new data shows just 7 per cent of those sales are for family-sized apartments.

Melbourne has welcomed at least 100,000 new residents each year for the past three years; construction of larger apartments makes up just 4 to 6 per cent of the market.

The unit market has so far proved resistant to oversupply issues facing cities like Brisbane, despite numerous warnings. But experts say governments should do more to ensure the right type of properties get built so new residents can find suitable homes.

“While it’s clear that the property sector has a love affair with building apartments, the odds of a perfect match with the public is as scientific as pairing up on The Bachelor,” Propertyology head of market research Simon Pressley said. “It doesn’t work like: ‘we’ll build it, they’ll come’.

“We determine where we live and what we live in.”

University of Melbourne planning researcher Kate Raynor said the enduring trend in Melbourne was that units offered a potential solution for home buyers, but only for a few years.

“A lot of the people I speak to say: ‘if I want to enter home ownership, I have to buy an apartment that won’t suit me in the long term or move out to South Morang’,” Dr Raynor said. “And that’s linked to social issues.”

In the past three decades, an average of 7281 houses were completed each quarter, and 2711 units. But in the past five years, that number has swelled 7880 houses each quarter and 6323 units, an analysis of ABS figures by Mr Pressley has shown.

He said the end result was an apartment market that saw little to no growth and stock that only some residents wished to live in or buy, particularly high levels of immigrants with larger families.

“During Melbourne’s boom in the past four years, the growth in dwelling values has been predominantly in unattached houses, it’s been much more moderate in units and now the growth cycle is over.”

Melbourne’s median house price rose 69 per cent over the past five years while units rose 24 per cent, Domain Group data shows.

Across Melbourne, 445,482 people live in apartments, the census revealed. Most are in the City of Melbourne, where 6.9 per cent of apartment residents are families, according to analysis of Census data by demographers .id.

Research by property advisory firm Urbis showed just 7 per cent of new apartment sales last year were for units of three bedrooms or more, and that figure is not expected to change.

“Urbis has observed an increasing trend of high end developments offering larger apartments, with upwards of 15 per cent of stock with three bedrooms or above,” said director Mark Dawson. “This corresponds to a shift in focus targeting the owner-occupier market and, in some cases, catering to group households renting a shared apartment.”

Dr Raynor said it was clear the mix of recently built apartments was geared toward investors.

“There’s been an influx in one bedroom apartments and that is going to cause problems,” she said. “An investor is concerned with different things an owner-occupier is looking at, namely rental returns.

“We’re living in the five year hangover of that situation.”

She said Melbourne had not properly regulated issues around apartments.

“How do you plan for regional housing targets when there’s no concrete numbers for need?”

“Our policy is really ad hoc in Australia.”

Victorian Property Council deputy executive director Matthew Kandelaars agreed government leadership on the issue was needed, but suggested the industry take up more build-to-rent models.

“Build-to-rent developments are common in the US and UK, provide alternatives to traditional investor-focussed accommodation and better homes more cheaply, with a greater security of rental tenure.”