Lakemba is a very Lebanese area. It's not the crime, it's not the mosque, it's not the traffic. It's not a rough or crime ridden area. You can go there and feel safe. It's just a pretty dim area full of flats and lebanese people. A lot of people don't want to go and live in an area that is predominantly Lebanese.
Peter Spann's book has an observation about people being attracted to suburbs because it has people 'just like us'.
The exception is 'pioneers' who move into a run-down area just because it is cheap (even if it is mostly inhabited by people different to them (eg migrants, old people, unemployed etc) and start the gentrification process.
The family migration program reinforces these settlement patterns.
Ditto for the refugee program, but with a bias towards the cheaper suburbs.
The skilled migration program less so as the people coming over have skills and money.
Nevertheless everyone (whether insterstate or overseas migrants) will want to (at least initially) settle in an area where the shopkeepers speak their language.
When migrants get established they may move out of a cheap suburb (eg Noble Park) to a better area eg Glen Waverley or Box Hill. Their successful offspring may push up school scores in these areas as well.
When a suburb is so tightly associated with a particular ethnic group or religion that it goes from monoculture to multiculture to monoculture then that suburb's destiny is related to the characteristics of its ethnic group.
Someone once said 'Demographics is Destiny' and I would agree.
Supposing a suburb attracted lots of new refugee migrants but the more successful people (some being refugees who made good themselves) moved out. That suburb would be degentrifying and its average incomes would stagnate. Similar economic patterns happened to suburbs like Doveton and Broadmeadows when we deindustrialised since the 1970s as long term unemployed replaced manual labourers and factory workers.
Another case might be a cheapish suburb full of European migrants. As Europe recovered from WWII in the 1950s onwards the number coming here from continental Europe declined. Their ethnic communities aged and died. They're being replaced either by gentrifier young couples of any ethnic group (eg Brunswick/Coburg) or settlers from newer migrant sources eg Asia & middle east (eg Fawkner).
In both cases if the people are moving into a suburb are poorer than those moving out you might not want to invest there.
Then there are suburbs that are becoming more ethnically-based but are attracting skilled migrants from overseas. While such suburbs may be shunned by what John Howard might call 'mainstream Australians', their prices may be supported becase the origin countries (notably in Asia) remain major migrant sources for Australia and the people settling are not poor. Also these areas might be attractive to migrants who have made it in the cheaper migrant-based 'enclaves' (like Lakemba, Noble Park, St Albans, Broadmeadows, Mirrabooka etc).
So it would seem to be that if you seek to understand the social structure of Muslims and identify suburbs where the more established / successful ones go, then you might get quite high capital gain. The 'ethnic' reputation of the suburb might not be a hindrance to capital growth if the 'tap' of migration continues and the proportion of Muslims grows as a percentage of the population (which is likely).
So the question for Lakemba is what happens to those Lebanse who have 'made it'. Do they stay or do they leave the suburb as soon as they can? And if the latter, maybe it's better to buy in the place they're moving to?