While my wife and I have a good amount of private capital, I would want to do this deal with someone else's money and my sweat equity. 

Active investors are using sweat equity (in the broadest sense) to (hopefully) best a market rate of return.  

Hello BiggerPockets Community,I'm a new out-of-state Real Estate Investor based in California (I work as a SWE at Google as my W2) and I'm working on brokering a potential deal between friends and a prospective landlord.

@Aaron Sweat you can certainly use these forums to search.  

Everything Ken said plus plaster walls, no insulation, higher electric bills, walls sweating when its humid in florida and the resident leaves front door open, damp smelly houses, Pealing paint, wood rot, old windows, crawl space under the home, bdrm and closet doors that don't close properly, electric locks that the old front door doesn't like as the door is not aligned correctly, Cyrstal knobs that fall off, old thermostats with 2 lines but my new thermostat needs 3 lines, critters in the fireplace....

The Tampa Bay area is more than likely not your market with those buying criteria.You will have to put meaningful sweat equity and be creative in your leasing (MTR, rent by room etc) to produce a 3bd SFH  <200K purchase price that cash flows. 

We got a lot of sweat equity out of the deal as well How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

Got it at a great price and did a sweat equity cosmetic rehab.

It doesn't matter how many brokers and REA feel pained and whine and slander guys who don't have a license yet able to make money off their sweat. 

Without big market appreciation (not likely) you'll need sweat equity to keep the ball rolling.