In 2000, my wife, my 2 boys (5 and 3 at the time), and I moved to the SF bay area.

My SF Bay Area backlog of preapproved FHA buyers is starting to have their offers stick much more frequently, including in Oakland (a year or two ago, I rarely did an FHA loan, since the offers rarely got accepted).

Our target is Ohio and Texas or even nearer but outside of bay area (too expensive).We wish to restrict ourselves to owning the property and lease the operation to experts.

I'm based in the SF Bay area.

To do this I need to get experience and learn under a current GC with 4+ years of experience, does anyone have any advice of how to go about getting this done or know any GC’s in the Tampa Bay Area that would be willing to take a complete newbie under their wing.

We've had very positive experiences house hacking in the SF bay area.

I just moved from the Bay but am not interested in those areas yet.

I am actively looking in the Tampa Bay Area for 20-50 units.  

#2 above, here in the East Bay (Oakland, etc), is STRONGLY also correlated with investors who are professional general contractors, salespersons, or, real estate agents, with a decade or more under their belt.

I'm only licensed in California, Bay Area and SoCal is most of my business, so I can't help you directly.