I'll be honest, living off equity isn't a strategy I'm an advocate of either now or in the past. In the current market it's a very difficult strategy to implement. I don't think it was me that wrote this post.
I beleive Michael Yardney wrote a book which goes into great detail about the subject. I'm not a fan of the book either.
I've had a number of clients who have read Michaels book. Whilst the strategies were certainly valid at the time and in the examples given were reasonable, LoE is not something just anyone with a property portfolio can implement.
Essentially my understanding is of LoE is you regularly increase your borrowings against your equity to fund your lifestyle. In the current market, lenders (and the law) simply won't allow you to borrow money without reasonable evidence that you can repay the loan.
Up until as recent as mid 2010 you could have probably done constant loan increases against your equity up to about 60% of the property value without too much trouble with a few lenders. New legislation has effectively shut this down and lenders now require BAS statements and trading account statements for almost all lo doc loans. If you're not legitimately self employed, you can't get a lo doc loan (and even then it's tough).
The other problem with the LoE strategy is it does rely on constant capital growth to generate equity to support it. I had a few people ask me to implement the strategy with a portfolio of 3-5 properties and a few hundred k in equity. This sort of portfolio isn't large enough to support continual increases through good and bad markets even if the banks would fund them.
The LoE strategy required literally millions in equity to work. If you've got that sort of equity and would like to retire, I can think of several stategies to acheive this, but LoE isn't one of them.
I'd be happy to have a chat about your specific circumstances to give you an idea of what you can acheive, but LoE isn't a stategy that would be easily implemented for most investors in the current lending environment.