The invention provides systems and methods for assisting the buying and selling of properties. The invention serves as a single point of contact for sellers, buyers, negotiators and third party service providers in the real estate market, offering a forum for identifying needs, presenting solutions and accessing a suite of real estate tools and services. An application architecture preferably includes resource applications, transaction applications, appointment management applications, advertising applications, and operations applications. A technical architecture preferably includes hardware that supports the application architecture, such as web servers serving web pages that serve as an online interface between the application architecture and the users. A business operation solution preferably includes independent but interacting product and content management functions, customer service functions, negotiator acquisition and management functions, operations support functions, marketing functions, alliance formation and management functions, technology operations functions, and back office support functions. A method preferably includes providing an online interface that sellers can use to provide information regarding properties they wish to sell, that can be used to publish the property-for-sale information to many buyers, and that buyers can use to provide information regarding properties they wish to buy. The method further includes selecting a property for recommendation to the buyer and providing the online interface for recommending the property to the buyer. The method further includes facilitating a negotiation between the seller and the buyer as necessary to effect a closing of a transaction between the seller and the buyer for the property.