Yes, the way you entered it looks fine, although I would replace "sale of home" with the address and zip code as you suggested.
As for the "no financial institution," this is fine as long as you did not get a Form 1099-S that reports the sale.
To address your second question about the sale of home section, I could not re-create your error. When I put in the sales expense, it properly added that to the cost basis and used Code L to indicate it is a disallowed loss. Code E is used if you did receive a 1099-S and the sales expenses were not included on that form as part of basis. Regardless of whether or not you received a 1099-S, TurboTax did correctly adjust the cost basis for me which turned the sale into a disallowable loss.
The reason to use the investment income section instead of the sale of home section is that the exclusion can only be applied to the sale of your main home. Even though in this case the sale generated a loss, we do not want it to be reported as a main home sale on Form 8949 because this may impact your ability to claim the exclusion in future years. The exclusion cannot be claimed for two years after you use it. For more information about the exclusion of gain from the sale of your main home, see IRS Publication 523.
