How to keep up with costs?

The first thing to do is never buy a neg geared property. Anyone can do that. You will find that many investors only ever buy one or two properties because of the cashflow drain, and many more sell their I.P's either to realise a profit, or because the drain is too hard and never buy again.
It is better to buy less properties, but buy only cashflow positive ones in cap growth areas (or at least have the likelihood of cap growth) so you can keep on accumulating without hurting the hip pocket, and the cap growth keeps increasing your wealth as you go.
Neg gearing is a short-term strategy you use while you wait for cap growth to occur, or while you are renovating before a flip etc. Of course, there is an element of gambling to that because no-one can predict the cap growth or final sell price of the flip.
You can arrange for your Property Manager to pay all your bills on your behalf out of your rent, and you get the rest deposited into your account.
Are your properties pos cashflowed AFTER TAX, or both neg geared?
Are the properties constructed after 1987? Have you had Depreciation Schedules prepared on them? They can make a BIG difference to your cashflow.

I'm a noobie at this and I'm in adelaide too. I've got 5 CF+ properties around outlying areas of Adelaide now and the rates and bills for the properties is weird to keep up with sometimes.

At the advice of my accountant and the lending guy at my bank, I personally put an offset account alongside the biggest debt I have, then put all the rent each month into that. I got my rental agent to pay the rent in fortnightly instead of monthly so it's in the account for longer. The interest drops a little for the month, making your cashflow a little bit nicer and then rents start to accumulate in the account because you spent a little less in interest costs. By the time the bills are due, there's enough saved in the account to pay each of the bills! Nice. 

Of course since then everyone on the forum has been really helpful about helping me figure out ways to get more cashflow into the account, more growth on the values and less costs on the mortgages. They're really helpful!

YAY!
Lisa (noobie)

hi all, I work in Craigmore and live in Blakeview. And yes, NORTHERN Adeialde is THE next HUGE thing.

Like all the areas out this way there are good areas and bad and unfortunatley its not a cut and dry and you cant say "this side of that street is good and the rest is bad". Craigmore has DEFINITELY got some dodgy areas but also some great new areas. I would be keeping to the northern end of craigmore more like near the somerset grove estate and the new Mormon(?) Temple rather than back toward craigmore shops and yorktown rd. The prices range a huge amount from high $100ks to even into the 400ks. The homes up high on Uley rd are expensive and the estate off uley road fairly high up has only large acre blocks There are not really good/bad areas as such but with a bit of legwork you can work it out. As i said nearer to somerset grove, and also as high up the hill as possible.

As i said i live in Blakeivew. Last year the median house price in Blakeview was something like $215000. this will work similar to craigmore. This is so NOT an accurate picture of the area. We live in Knightsbridge Heights estate which is all really new, the land was subdivided in 2003. Our area has homes going for mostly above $300 (4bed d/gar) with only a few between $250 and $300 but most are around $300. Ours is a 3bed double gar and it was valued at $275 12 months ago by our bank. Two homes down is a 2 storey on the market for $450 (a little bit sttep).  If you go back down the hill towards main north road, most of the homes in this area of blakeview are from 70's or 80's  and more owners are selling up.

My opinion is that the median house price calculated from the sales in the area is at the level it is, because lots of people who own older homes are selling them and cashing in on the boom that occured between 2003 and 2006 and building or buying something newer/bigger. Lots of my freinds are doing this. 

There is NO doubt that the area is booming out here. Playford rise (which is above somerset grove) looks beautful with hundreds of new homes being built at the moment and most of them are good sized with large allotments of 600m2 upto 1800m2, and prcied from $100 to $300k.  

If you go down the hill to smithfield plains, Devine are selling off 100's of blocks there as they try to change the Daveron PArk bronx mentality (and its working). The problem is that ALL the blocks are 300m2, (YES ALL THE BLOCKS) and all the homes will be shoeboxes built by people who cant afford anything but to go with devines no deposit finance deal. Have a look for yourself, do a google search for Oakwood estate. If you see the master plan i reckon you will be shocked like i was. 

Hope this helps.