I could hire my real estate attorney but he'll charge me hourly to set it up and I'm not confident this previous will pay anything.

(nice to meet you.)what i can help with is determining how your property might perform as a rental. so let's do that.as you probably know, you need to factor in much more than mortgage / PITI. so:will you self-manage, or hire a PM? 

I have less than six months before I retire from the Air Force.

This month the air has changed I Guess...

Do I have enough of a case to hire a lawyer and sue her outside of small claims court? 

You can bet they do quality work or these huge companies would not be hiring them. 

I hired a lawyer who wrote a letter and was able to negotiate loss of just 1 month of security deposit vs 3 months of rent that was earlier demanded by property management company.

@Taylor Cook if you hire a bookkeeper you still need to answer clarifying questions on what the transactions were for.

That is how I got started.I also encourage you to listen to the Thanks for Visiting podcast because they are in your city.I hired an online interior designer and gave a per-square-foot budget.

However, the GC I hired was wildly incompetent so they missed critical components like the HVAC, we had to redo the sewer drain to the house, holding costs delays … you name it.