Try this:
1. Run tar -tvf on the tarfile. This will tell you what is the absolute path in the tar file.
2. Make a soft link for that path to the actual path where you want to extract the files.
eg. Suppose that the path in the tar file is /home/common/xyz (files are present under the xyz directory) and you want to extract to /home/test directory, then simply do this:
a. mkdir -p /home/common
b. ln -s /home/test /home/common/xyz # assuming here that /home/test exists
3. Run tar to extract the files.
tar -xvf tarfilename # this will extract the files that were in the archive to /home/test