The best way to sell your property is to correctly price it when you first put it on the market.

What many people do not realize is that it really does not matter what you think your home is worth. The market will make the decision despite how you feel or what you think. Price the home to high it will sit unsold until prices rise high enough to make it correctly priced. In a declining market you simply will not sell your home.

Here are some methods for pricing your home:

* You can't go by what you paid for the place. Perhaps you bought three years ago and the local prices were moving higher at a very fast rate, and since then things have slowed down. Maybe houses like yours can now be purchased for less, and if you hold out for what you paid, you'll just waste your time.

* You can not decide your home's price on how much you spent on upgrades. A given area will support only a given value which means if you over improve the house you may never see those improvement reflected in the price of the home.

* You can't go by your tax assessment figure. Even in communities that aim at full-value assessments, the figures are almost never in line with what buyers are currently ready to pay.

So what is the best way to determine the value of your home?

Put yourself in a buyer's shoes.

Your local Realtor will be able to get his information for you and help determine the correct price. Does it compare with your house and if so in what ways and how does it differ? How long has it been on the market and did it have any proce reductions? What has sold in the area, and how what did the market value it at? What did not sell in the past year?

So your best bet is to get a CMA or Comparative Market Analysis on your home done by a Realtor. Most Realtor will do this for free, you may find it a real eye opener.