As home prices in Vancouver continue to soar, a new trend is emerging in the city: parents buying their children – some as young as six months old – condos to prevent them from getting priced out of the market.

Chris Catliff, chief executive officer of British Columbia credit union BlueShore Financial Group, told BNN that some of his clients have begun purchasing homes for their school-aged children and grandchildren as the value of single-family homes escalates.

“They’re doing that because they’re putting it in trusts or holding companies and they’re looking at a way of investing for the long term,” he explained in an interview. “Obviously they’d rent that out for a considerable amount of time.”

Catliff said that as the supply of single-family homes has diminished, and their value has escalated more than the value of condos, he has witnessed a shift in strategy among his clients. They’re thinking more about making an investment that would meet their family’s needs in the long run rather than focusing on the short-term question of where they might move next.

“It’s becoming quite a phenomenon,” he said.

But as Catliff warns, these types of investments come with some dangers.

“How do they know where their kids will want to live in the future, what universities they’ll go to? There’s lots of things that can happen in the meanwhile. ” he said. “We instruct [our clients] to take a good look at this.”

Catfliff said that ultimately, a lot of people are happy with the returns they’ve generated in Vancouver real estate and want to put their gains back into something that will benefit their families in the long run.