How much does a timeshare cost in 2026? Real numbers

Last updated 2026-07-24

How much is a timeshare, on average?

The average price of a new timeshare purchased directly from a developer was about $23,940 in 2023, according to the American Resort Development Association (ARDA), the timeshare industry's own trade group. That figure covers a deeded or points-based week bought at retail from a resort sales office, not a resale unit bought secondhand. The real range is wide. A studio-sized, off-season week at a smaller resort can run $8,000 to $12,000. A two-bedroom, prime-season week at a branded resort (Marriott Vacation Club, Hilton Grand Vacations, Disney Vacation Club) can run $30,000 to $50,000 or more, and large points packages sold as "flexible" ownership frequently price even higher because they bundle several weeks' worth of usage rights. Here's the number nobody puts on the brochure: resale value. Timeshares are not an appreciating asset. A quick scan of resale marketplaces and owner forums shows deeded weeks reselling for $1 to a few hundred dollars, sometimes literally given away because the seller just wants out of the maintenance fee obligation. That gap between what you pay a developer and what the same unit sells for a year later is the single most important number in this whole topic. If you're mid-purchase and reconsidering, the cheapest way out by far is your rescission window, which we cover in detail on our how to get out of a timeshare page. Every state sets its own rescission period and it is short, sometimes just a matter of days, so confirm your state's rescission window before you do anything else. Florida, for example, gives buyers a 10-day cancellation period under its timeshare statute ^[1].

How much do timeshares cost per year in maintenance fees?

Average annual maintenance fees were about $1,260 in 2023, per ARDA's owner survey data. That's the baseline number floating around most industry reporting, but it's an average across all resort types, so it understates what you'll pay at a larger unit or a luxury-brand resort. Two-bedroom or three-bedroom units commonly run $1,500 to $3,000 a year in fees. Luxury branded resorts can push past $3,000. And these fees are not static. Maintenance fees have historically risen faster than general inflation in many years, driven by rising insurance costs, labor, and renovation reserves. Owners report increases in the range of 3% to 8% a year being common, though your specific resort's board sets the number and there's no federal cap on how much they can raise it. On top of the base fee, most timeshare contracts allow the homeowners association (HOA) or resort management to levy special assessments, one-time charges for a new roof, storm damage, litigation costs, or a renovation the resort decided it needed. These have run anywhere from a few hundred dollars to $10,000 or more per owner after hurricane damage at coastal resorts, though there's no single national dataset tracking special assessment amounts across the whole industry, so treat any specific number you hear as anecdotal until you see your own resort's board minutes or your contract's assessment clause. This is the fee structure that makes owners want out years after the sales pitch faded. If rising fees are your main problem, our maintenance fees coverage is the place to start.

How much does it cost to get rid of a timeshare?

This depends entirely on which exit path you take, and the range is enormous, from $0 to tens of thousands of dollars. Rescission (inside your state's window): Free. You're canceling a contract you have a legal right to cancel. No fee should ever be owed to exercise this right. Deed-back or surrender program: Some resorts now offer a deedback program where you hand the deed back to the resort, sometimes for free, sometimes for an administrative fee in the low hundreds to low thousands of dollars. Not all resorts offer this, and it's usually only available if your account is current, meaning no back fees owed. Selling on the resale market: Listing fees on timeshare resale sites typically run $0 to a few hundred dollars, and closing/transfer costs (deed transfer, recording fees, sometimes a transfer fee charged by the resort itself) can add a few hundred more. The catch is finding a buyer at all. Many owners end up paying someone to take the timeshare rather than getting paid for it. Hiring a timeshare exit company: This is where costs balloon. Exit companies commonly charge $2,000 to $10,000 or more upfront, and the Federal Trade Commission sued Timeshare Exit Team and related defendants in 2021 (FTC v. Reed Hein & Associates, LLC, W.D. Wash.) for taking large upfront fees, in some cases thousands of dollars per consumer, while failing to deliver the promised cancellation. We break down how to evaluate these firms on our timeshare exit companies page, but the short version: never pay a large sum upfront based on a promise of a fast, clean release. Doing it yourself with a structured process: This is the low-cost middle path many owners choose, working through deed-back applications, resale listings, or negotiated releases on your own timeline, sometimes with a one-time toolkit rather than an ongoing service contract. Our $149 Exit Kit Builder was built around exactly that idea: pay once, get the letters, checklists, and state-specific guidance, and do the legwork yourself instead of paying a company thousands to make calls you could make.

How to get out of a timeshare (the actual decision tree)

Start by asking one question: are you still inside your rescission period? If yes, this is the cheapest and cleanest exit available, full stop. Every state has a statutory cancellation window for timeshare purchases, and it's short (commonly under two weeks, though the exact number varies by state so confirm your state's rescission window before assuming a deadline). You typically must cancel in writing, by the method your contract specifies, before the deadline, and you don't need a lawyer or a company to do it. Our rescission by state hub has state-specific windows. If your rescission period already passed, your realistic options are: deed-back/surrender to the resort, resale (accepting you'll likely get little or nothing for it), a negotiated release, or in rare cases, a documented hardship or fraud claim against the original sale. Each of these has a real process and real paperwork; none of them is instant, and none of them should require you to pay a large fee upfront to a company promising to "cancel" your contract for you. What you should never do: stop paying your maintenance fees or loan as a negotiating tactic. Missed payments typically trigger late fees, collections calls, and can tank your credit score, and they don't make the underlying contract disappear. If you owe money under your contract, that debt is real until it's formally resolved through one of the exit paths above. For the fuller walkthrough, see how to get out of timeshare and how do you get out of a timeshare.

How to sell a timeshare (and what it's actually worth)

Selling a timeshare is legal and straightforward mechanically, but the market is brutal. List on a reputable timeshare resale marketplace, be upfront about your annual fees and any special assessment history, price competitively (often near $0 to a few hundred dollars for most non-luxury weeks), and expect the process to take months, not days. Before you list, check your deed or contract for a right of first refusal clause, some resorts require you to offer them the unit back at your sale price before you can sell to a third party. Also check whether the resort charges a transfer fee, which the buyer or seller has to cover at closing. A hard truth worth saying plainly: most timeshares are not sellable for meaningful money. The developer's markup (commissions, sales center overhead, marketing) is baked into that original $23,940 average price, and none of that markup transfers to resale value. If you're trying to sell purely to stop paying maintenance fees, a deed-back or surrender program is often faster and cheaper than waiting for a buyer who may never show up. Never pay an upfront fee to a company that claims it has a buyer already lined up and ready to close. That's one of the most common resale scam patterns the FTC and state attorneys general warn about.

Are timeshares scams?

The timeshare product itself is legal in all 50 states; it's a real form of property or usage-right ownership with real contracts. But the sales process and the exit industry around it are where scams concentrate, and owners are right to be wary. On the sales side: high-pressure presentations, inflated claims about investment value or rental income, and understated disclosure of rising fees are long-documented industry practices that consumer protection regulators have pursued. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's consumer guidance on timeshares warns buyers to research resale value and total cost of ownership carefully before signing, since developer-sold prices rarely reflect what the interest is later worth. On the exit side: the FTC's 2021 case against Reed Hein & Associates (doing business as Timeshare Exit Team) alleged the company collected more than $200 million from consumers nationwide while frequently failing to cancel their timeshares as promised, and the company agreed to a settlement barring it from continuing the challenged practices. Multiple state attorneys general, including Florida's, where timeshare density is highest, have also pursued exit-scam cases and publish consumer alerts on the pattern. So the honest answer: the timeshare itself usually isn't a scam, it's a bad-value asset with an aggressive sales process. The scam risk concentrates in two places, the original high-pressure sales pitch, and the exit-company industry that preys on desperate owners afterward. Read more on our timeshare cancellation page for how to tell a legitimate exit path from a scam pitch.

What's a realistic total cost of ownership over 10 years?

Run the math honestly and it's sobering. Say you buy at the ARDA average of $23,940, with $1,260 in year-one maintenance fees rising a conservative 4% a year. Over 10 years you'd pay roughly $23,940 upfront plus about $15,100 in cumulative maintenance fees (using a 4% annual increase, not compounding beyond that), for a rough total of $39,000, before financing interest and before any special assessments. If you financed the purchase, and a large share of developer-sold timeshares are financed in-house at the point of sale, interest rates on timeshare loans commonly run in the mid-to-high teens, sometimes higher, well above a typical mortgage or even most credit cards. That can add another $8,000 to $15,000 or more in interest over a 10-year loan term, depending on rate and term length. And if your resort levies even one special assessment during that decade, which is common after storm damage or a major renovation, add another few hundred to several thousand dollars on top. Compare that to renting comparable accommodations for the same weeks over 10 years, and in many cases straight cash rental comes out cheaper, with zero long-term obligation, no resale problem, and no fee increases to track. That's the comparison that timeshare sales presentations are structurally designed to avoid putting in front of you.

Timeshare cost comparison: purchase types and typical price ranges

Timeshare type	Typical upfront price	Typical annual fee	Resale value
Studio, off-season, smaller resort	$8,000 to $12,000	$700 to $1,100	Often under $500
1-bedroom, mid-season	$12,000 to $22,000	$1,000 to $1,500	Often $200 to $1,000
2-bedroom, prime season, branded resort	$30,000 to $50,000+	$1,500 to $3,000+	Varies, still far below purchase price
Points-based flex package	$20,000 to $60,000+	$1,200 to $3,000+	Typically very low resale demand	These ranges reflect commonly reported developer pricing and owner-survey fee averages; actual price at any single resort depends on brand, season, unit size, and sales-office negotiation. Resale figures reflect what's commonly observed on resale marketplaces and owner forums rather than one single dataset, since no government agency tracks timeshare resale transaction prices nationally.

How to get rid of a timeshare without losing more money to a scam

Three warning signs should stop you immediately, wherever you see them: a company that asks for a large upfront fee before doing any work, a company that promises a specific cancellation timeline it can't back up in writing, and a company that tells you to stop paying your maintenance fees or loan while they "work on it." All three are common patterns in FTC enforcement actions against exit companies. Legitimate paths cost little or nothing beyond your own time: exercising a rescission right (free, but time-limited), applying for a resort's own deed-back or surrender program (free to low fee), listing for resale yourself (low fee), or working through a structured, one-time-fee toolkit rather than an ongoing retainer. Before paying anyone anything, check your state attorney general's consumer protection page and the FTC's timeshare resale scam guidance. Search the company's name plus "complaint" or "lawsuit." The CFPB also takes consumer complaints about timeshare loans and financing practices, which is another place a pattern of problems tends to surface. A few minutes of searching has saved owners from losing thousands to fake exit companies. If you want a structured, one-time-fee approach rather than paying a company an ongoing retainer, our $149 Exit Kit Builder gives you the letters, checklists and state-specific steps to run the exit process yourself. We are not a law firm and we don't contact the resort or developer on your behalf, and we don't promise that any particular resort will release you, but we do give you the same documented playbook attorneys and legitimate exit advocates use, at a fraction of the cost of a $5,000 exit company retainer.

How much does a timeshare cost to inherit?

If you inherited a timeshare, you likely didn't pay a purchase price, but you inherit the ongoing obligations: the annual maintenance fee (averaging around $1,260 industry-wide, often more at a larger unit), any special assessments the resort levies, and any remaining loan balance if the original owner financed the purchase and didn't pay it off. You generally are not personally obligated to accept an inherited timeshare. An estate's executor can disclaim (formally refuse) the inheritance under state disclaimer law, in which case the timeshare typically passes back into the estate for the resort or other heirs to deal with, subject to your state's probate and disclaimer rules. The IRS also recognizes qualified disclaimers for federal tax purposes under 26 U.S.C. § 2518, which sets the requirements (in writing, within nine months, no acceptance of benefits) for a disclaimer to be treated as if the heir never received the interest ^[2]. Once you've accepted the deed, though, or if you've been using the unit and paying fees, the resort will generally treat you as the new owner responsible for fees going forward. If you're facing an inherited timeshare with fees you don't want to pay, the deed-back and surrender process is usually the first thing to check, since many resorts have specific inherited-ownership surrender procedures given how common this situation has become.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a timeshare cost on average?

About $23,940 upfront on average for a developer-sold week, per ARDA's 2023 owner data, plus roughly $1,260 a year in maintenance fees. Actual prices range from around $8,000 for a small off-season unit to $50,000 or more for a large branded resort in prime season.

How much are timeshares on the resale market?

Often just a few hundred dollars or less, sometimes given away for free since sellers mainly want to stop paying maintenance fees. Resale value is not tracked in one official government dataset, but resale marketplaces and owner forums consistently show prices far below original purchase price.

How do you get out of a timeshare?

Check if you're still inside your state's rescission window first, that's free and fastest. After that, options include a resort deed-back or surrender program, resale, or a negotiated release. Never stop paying fees as a strategy, and never pay a large upfront fee to a company promising a fast cancellation.

How to get out of a timeshare contract after the rescission period ends?

Contact the resort about a deed-back or surrender program, since many now offer this for owners current on fees. If that's unavailable, list for resale or consult a licensed attorney in your state. Avoid exit companies demanding large upfront payments with cancellation promises; the FTC sued Reed Hein & Associates (Timeshare Exit Team) over this exact pattern in 2021.

How to sell a timeshare?

List it on a reputable timeshare resale marketplace, price it realistically (often near $0 to a few hundred dollars), disclose annual fees and assessment history, and check your deed for a right-of-first-refusal clause the resort may hold. Expect months, not days, to find a buyer, and never pay upfront for a promised buyer you haven't verified yourself.

Are timeshares scams?

The ownership product itself is legal, but the sales process is aggressive and often misleading about investment value, and the exit industry has documented scam patterns. The FTC's 2021 case against Reed Hein & Associates alleged the company took over $200 million from consumers while often failing to deliver promised cancellations. Treat both the original sales pitch and unsolicited exit offers with skepticism.

How much do timeshare maintenance fees go up each year?

There's no fixed national rate, but owners commonly report increases of roughly 3% to 8% a year, and fees have often outpaced general inflation over the past decade. The resort's HOA or management board sets the increase, and contracts rarely cap it.

How much does a special assessment cost?

There's no single national figure since each resort's board sets its own assessment based on the specific repair or event, but reported amounts range from a few hundred dollars to $10,000 or more per owner after major damage like hurricanes. Check your specific resort's board minutes or contract clause for your real exposure.

How to get rid of a timeshare for free?

Rescission during your state's cancellation window is free. Some resort deed-back or surrender programs are also free, especially if your account is current on fees. Resale can be low-cost but rarely nets you money. Anyone charging a large upfront fee and promising a clean, fast exit should be treated as a red flag.

How much does hiring a timeshare exit company cost?

Commonly $2,000 to $10,000 or more, paid upfront in many cases. The FTC's 2021 case against Reed Hein & Associates (Timeshare Exit Team) alleged the company collected large upfront fees from consumers nationwide without reliably delivering cancellations. A lower-cost, self-directed approach or a one-time-fee toolkit is often more cost-effective than a retainer-based exit company.

Can I just stop paying my timeshare maintenance fees?

Not without consequences. Missing payments typically triggers late fees, collections activity, and credit score damage, and the underlying contract obligation doesn't disappear just because you stop paying. If you can't afford the fees, pursue a deed-back, surrender, or resale process instead of simply defaulting.

What happens if I inherit a timeshare I don't want?

You can generally disclaim (formally refuse) an inherited timeshare through the estate's probate process rather than automatically accepting the fees and obligations. Federal tax law recognizes a qualified disclaimer under 26 U.S.C. Section 2518 if it's made in writing within nine months. Once you've accepted the deed or started using the unit, the resort will typically treat you as the responsible owner going forward.

Sources

1. FTC v. Reed Hein & Associates, LLC (d/b/a Timeshare Exit Team), Case No. 2:19-cv-00423, W.D. Wash., FTC press release on 2021 settlement: FTC enforcement action alleging Timeshare Exit Team collected large upfront fees from consumers, over $200 million total, while often failing to deliver promised cancellations
2. 26 U.S.C. Section 2518, Disclaimers, Cornell Legal Information Institute: Requirements for a qualified disclaimer of an inherited interest, including the nine-month written notice requirement
3. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Explanation of what a timeshare is and its financial obligations, relevant to average timeshare cost
4. Internal Revenue Service: IRS guidance on rental property and personal use property that applies to tax treatment of timeshare ownership costs
5. Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute: Truth in Lending Act provisions relevant to timeshare financing costs and disclosures
6. Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute: Tax basis rules relevant to inheriting a timeshare and its stepped-up basis implications