Are you thinking about putting your lakefront home up for sale, but not sure where to begin? Scared it will take a long time to sell, or that you wont receive the price you are looking for? Consider staging your lake home, i.e., arranging the lake home to peak a buyers interest in the property.

It is very effective to stage both the inside and outside of your lakefront home. These are 3 tips to make the interior more appealing:

1. Remove unneeded items. By removing unneeded items you can make your home feel larger than it may actually be. Remove things that you do not have to have like furniture, seasonal decorations, seasonal clothing, and other housewares that you can live without for a short period of time. You can either store these items in a garage or portable storage building.

2. Organize your cabinets and closets- After you have packed up the dishes and clothing you don’t have to have right now, coordinate your remaining dishes and clothing by color and type. Why you ask? Organized cabinets and closets appear larger. Spacious closets and cabinets really help sell a home.

3. Create a show model lake home. After you are done packing up your personal belongings, you can hang pictures of boats or other lake pictures in place of your personal photos. You can also place decorative items like boat ores, signs, and plants in corners or shelves. Place some decorated canisters or fruit in some attractive baskets or glass vases in stead of counter top appliances that you don’t need.

And the biggest tip of all? Think of yourself as the potential buyer looking at your lakefront home for the very first time. What impressions do you get? Would you buy your lake home? What changes would you like to see made before you put an offer to purchase your home?

And don’t worry about spending a lot of money to get your house ready to sell you’ll recoup it when your house sells. Proper staging helps you sell your house in a shorter period of time and at the price you want.

Hubert Miles is the founder of Waterfront Houses USA, an online marketing service that offers Lakefront Homes and Lake Homes available in the US and Canada.