I am representing a group. 

I use 8.3% here which represents 1 vacant month per apartment per year. 

Real estate agents are essentially practicing law (in a very limited capacity) and most people wouldn’t represent themselves in legal matters.

Many of these markets are very well represented by sellers & turnkey operators here on BiggerPockets.

A nuclear exposition is possibly one of the most negative images you could use to represent yourself.

Start having conversations with your representatives. 

Even for the development side they got a house to develop (that was on market) it was reduced 10% off the list price including more within escrow through myself/team representing them.All that experience and even being licensed before put them into a "mindset," you could say that they do not want to step over a dollar to pickup a penny.

Now it sounds like you are in a LCOL area if $400,000 is high end so maybe brokers need to represent themselves but in HCOL locations a broker is going to not waste time selling his own properties when he can make more money doing his job.I hope your clients don't follow your example of using flat fee brokers. 

However, a buddy of mine got a random call one day from an attorney who was representing one of his former tenants.  

I represented myself as my buyers agent.