If so, youll want to do the calculations if it makes sense to immediately refinance or wait the year until the penalty goes away. 

If so, it would make sense to figure that out first before deciding on a specific area.

For me personally, I am hesitant to sell unless it really makes sense.

There's no wrong way, as long as it makes sense for YOU.

Some, but not a lot of choices are rare do any of the prices make sense to me.   

That is just not realistic in this current market.So in my opinion it's important to expose yourself to a large number of deals, so you can develop an intuitive sense of what's reasonable and what's not (and quickly discard the ones that aren't).And it's true that there is no way to 100% protect from fraud (and not just in passive real estate investments but even in public stocks etc.).

On top of that, many policies have become more strict (especially in the last few years) with replacement cost language because replacement cost estimates did not keep up with inflation for a period of time AND/OR replacement costs on many older properties had skyrocketed so it made more sense to calculate replacement values with functionally equivalent rather than exact materials.

I am the type of person that is normally looking to save a money to increase my investing so the thought of paying someone to do my taxes when we could do them ourselves didn't make sense. 

Quote from @Calvin Thomas: Flat fee makes little sense. 

I sense your frustration.