Selling your home can be a stressful experience.  But it doesn't need to be that way.  Most home-selling pitfalls are easily avoided with up-front preparation and teamwork between you and your real estate agent.  I have determined the most common mistakes home sellers make, along with how to avoid them in order to get the best price for your home, in the shortest amount of time, with the least amount of stress.

Today we'll focus on an unfortunately very common Seller Mistake:

Over-pricing
Based on an emotional assessment, it is easy to think your house is worth more than the current market may support. After all, it's not just your house, but it is your home, and your home is special to you and your family.  To determine a reasonable listing price, work with a real estate professional familiar with your area. Your agent will provide a comparable market analysis of your home, including recent listing and sales prices of homes in your area, along with how long it took for the homes to sell.

Even when homes sales are brisk, and homes are flying off the market, it is still important to consider "Competitive Pricing" of your home.  Listing at a price competitive with - not higher than -- recent sales prices will create additional interest in your home, generating much interest from the pool of buyers in the market for a new home.  Pricing your home higher than the competition, or higher than recent comparable sales prices, will result in buyers and other real estate agents avoiding your home and focusing their interest on other, well-priced homes in your area.

An over-priced home can also be used by buyers and their agents to show the inherent value of another, competitively-priced home.  What does this mean to you, as the seller?  It means that your home just succeeded in being the cause of your neighbor's home to sell. This should not be your intention when putting your home on the market.

Proper and competitive pricing is just one aspect of the home sale that your real estate agent will assist you with.  But it is one of the first and most important issues to be dealt with up front.