This was the upshot of a new study by commercial property consultancy GVA.
The report found that over two-thirds of the housing land supply in parts of Scotland with the greatest demand for homes is tied up in large-scale sites.
These sites are difficult to develop due to the high costs of new infrastructure, such as roads and schools, according to GVA.
Scottish councils must adopt an infrastructure-focused approach, including looking at ways of using up-front funding to unlock these sites, the report revealed.
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The study included six councils in the Edinburgh and Aberdeen regions, which it described as the areas of Scotland with the highest residential demand.
GVA found five of the six councils have about two-thirds or more of their total supply in sites with a capacity for more than 250 new homes.
The average figure across the six councils is 68%, according to GVA.
The report's co-author, GVA associate Alasdair Morrison said: "Local government needs to be more proactive about how to use their capital budget to facilitate development. At the moment there's an intransigence.
"They're expecting the private sector to fund that infrastructure to kick-start development, traditionally through planning gain agreements, but they need to be looking at their capital budgets to do that."
Morrison said the public sector needed to "take some of that risk up front" if they wanted a site developed for housing.
(IT)
