Australia's first-home buyers are morphing into first-home investors, according to new mortgage industry research. Much of the current investor demand for housing has come from young, middle to high income households and is actually "pseudo first-home buyer demand", Macquarie Securities and RFi said in joint research published this week.Their finding supports anecdotal evidence from several sources that a growing number of first-home buyers are entering the market as investors as a way of offsetting the high purchase cost in the early years of ownership.Some commentators have also argued that this trend casts doubt on the validity of the Australian Bureau of Statistics' first-home buyer data. According to the ABS, the proportion of first-home buyers in the market has fallen from around 20 per cent at the end of 2011 to around 12 per cent today. However, the ABS data excludes persons entering the market for the first time to buy an investment property.Macquarie and RFi said the typical residential property investor of the past - and older person with a high income - has been a declining force in the market in recent years.Meanwhile, participation in the investment market by young people on middle and high incomes has grown strongly over the past couple of years. "These people are choosing to invest in, rather than occupy, properties because of affordability issues. The situation is likely to continue," the report said.Mortgage Choice chief executive, Michael Russell, said: "There's been a fundamental shift in the expectations of first-home buyers, who now want to and expect to buy in either the area they were brought up, or in close proximity to their place of work."To achieve this, many genuine first-home buyers are electing to buy an investment property in lieu of a property owned for occupation. This is a growing trend."