So far no one has shown me anything to suggest WS gets better long term growth than closer suburbs.
How important is this? The answer is it depends on your investment strategy.
The western suburbs don't need higher long-term growth than closer suburbs for BV's strategy to work successfully.
Indeed, due to the higher yields and ability to have a bigger portfolio, even if they grew at a lower percentage rate the owner may do as well as the investor who only has 'blue chip' inner suburban IPs. Give me 7% of $1m over 10% of $500k any day!
In the current environment, I would argue that an investing strategy that only needs property to grow at CPI (on average) is far safer than one that assumes much higher growth (eg 10% pa) to work.
Plus the higher holding costs inherent in lower yielding property increases the risk of the investor having to sell up (due to being unable to meet the -ve cashflow) or becoming disheartened at the big losses and selling.
Murphy's law states that the next boom starts about 6 months after selling so a portfolio that can be sustained long-term without forced sales or excessive negative cashflow is best.