What I am specifically looking for is perhaps a hard money lender that will work with my equity and not so much with my financials or credit history.

You have to provide the money to purchase the new property. 

Lastly, California is very over priced in most cases so keep in mind buying out of state is not hard and can save you a ton of money. 

If you property is in Detroit you setup a landlord account with the water company and any tenant that comes in opens a account in their name and follows them in your case it will be you and then a tax lien on the property they will get their money either way.

Bank of America had this man's money for a week - in their account.

I tried having real estate agents show the property to prospective tenants (wasn't comfortable giving folks access remotely) but they didn't make much money to they would flake as well.

Most of the properties I have available are $300,000-700,000; so if a hard money lender requires 25% down, with closing costs of 1-2%, and the hard money lender wants $20,000 in reserves, plus 1% to the hard money lender, we're looking at anywhere between $104,000 to $216,000 out of pocket costs. 

Debt allows you to increase the velocity of your money. 

You've earned $132,000 more by splitting your money and leveraging it.

This will save me some money in the longer run.