If you sell, rather than exchange, you will still have to deal with gain on the sale, depreciation recapture, and potentially carried forward losses from previously disallowed passive activity loss. You accountant has this information already stored, so for me, it would be a significant time saver. I would definitely not try to report a 1031 exchange without a professional.
And I think $500 for a tax return is cheap, but I worked at a firm with a $1,000 minimum.