Thing is, you need cashflow to buy your groceries.  Equity doesn't pay the bills.  Definitely not saying avoid capital growth.  You absolutely need it.  But you also need cashflow.  I prefer to go for properties that produce both, rather than one property that is just cashflow and a separate property that is just capital growth. 

The thing people forget is that whilst waiting for the capital growth (and presuming it happens in the manner you hope) you still have to support the mortgage whilst waiting.  In the case of a negatively geared property that is down by say $200 per week, you essentially have to find $200×52=$10,400 per year out of your own pocket just to hang on to the property.  If you cannot find such volumes of spare cash, then it is not even a strategy you could consider, because you would not be able to hang on.  Make sense?  Also, if you did have a spare $10,400 per year, you might prefer to be putting that towards acquiring additional properties rather than supporting just the one property.

Another thing to be wary of are putting all your eggs in one basket.  Imagine if you had one expensive property and it was vacant for ages.  You would have zero rental income.  Not much good to you when you are retired and counting on the rental income to buy your groceries.  And another thing is land tax.  If you have lots of your chips on the board in one state, you hit that land-tax-free-threshold really fast.