No, you can't change the year you wish to report a gain. The Installment Sale Form 6252, is used when the payment for the sale of property is spread over more than one year. If you sold the property in 2017, you report the entire gain in 2017. You will need to amend your last year return if you did not report the gain. It is a rental property, not a second home if you rented it at full rental value.
If you did not take depreciation on rental property, you have two choices. You can take your lumps and recover it without every having deducted it in the first place or you can choose to change your accounting method on Form 3115.
Unfortunately the depreciation
recapture is "allowed or allowable" meaning even if you never
depreciated it, you would still have to recapture the depreciation.
Depreciation taken would be on line 18 of Schedule E.
One solution is to elect
an accounting method change and file a Form 3115 in the current year and take
the prior depreciation as a section 481(a) adjustment. [land value
is separated, land is not depreciated]
Below are the IRS links related
to the change in accounting method. TurboTax does not have that form.
May be these will help
Form 3115, Application for
Change in Accounting Method
http://www.irs.gov/uac/Form-3115,-Application-for-Change-in-Accounting-Method
Instructions for Form 3115
(03/2012)
http://www.irs.gov/instructions/i3115/index.html
Form 3115,
http://www.irs.gov/file_source/pub/irs-pdf/f3115.pdf
