Grants to stimulate the residential construction sector will be means-tested to include upper-middle-income singles and couples, and will be in place for only a short period to try to avoid causing a blowout in house prices.

The construction package, to be signed off on Tuesday by the expenditure review committee, is one of several industry-specific packages being drafted by the government, as it moves away from economy-wide broad assistance measures and targets sectors that will take longer to recover, or have fallen through the cracks.