How Much Does a Timeshare Cost Over 10 Years? The Full Math

What does a timeshare cost over a decade?

On the industry’s own 2025 averages, a $24,740 timeshare week held for ten years comes to about $44,000 paid in cash, and roughly $64,000 to $68,000 if you borrow nine-tenths of the price at the 14.6% average Travel + Leisure charges. Neither figure includes a special assessment, and both assume the week is worth nothing when you are done, an outcome the FTC says is possible because selling one “might be hard, if not impossible.” The yearly maintenance fee drives most of the total, and in the industry’s own series it has gone up every year since 2021.

Those inputs come straight from the developers’ side. ARDA, their trade group, had Ernst & Young prepare its 2026 State of the Industry study. It reports a 2025 average sale of $24,740 and an average billed fee of $1,550 for each weekly interval equivalent.

Year	Average billed fee	Dollar change	Percent change
2021	$1,120
2022	$1,170	+$50	+4.5%
2023	$1,260	+$90	+7.7%
2024	$1,480	+$220	+17.5%
2025	$1,550	+$70	+4.7%

From ARDA’s 2026 study (Ernst & Young). ARDA states the 2025 increase; we calculated the others from its yearly averages.

That is 38% in four years, close to 8.5% a year compounded. The study adds context. Its average counts reserve contributions but not taxes or special assessments. Changes in which resorts report can move the industry-wide number, and resorts reporting in each of those two years saw a 4.2% rise. ARDA links the sharper 2022 to 2024 increases to general inflation and higher insurance costs after recent natural disasters, and notes that because fees are billed at the start of each year, inflation can reach them a year or two late.

Is my resort’s fee higher than average?

One average hides a wide range. ARDA’s 2025 breakdown lets you place your own bill:

By unit size	Average fee		Share of resorts by average fee	Percent
Studio	$1,180		Under $1,000	8%
One bedroom	$1,260		$1,000 to $1,199	15%
Two bedrooms	$1,550		$1,200 to $1,399	18%
Three bedrooms or more	$1,900		$1,400 to $1,599	19%
			$1,600 or more	39%

ARDA 2026 study, Figure 2.4.

Age matters too. Resorts that opened in 1985 or earlier, 43% of those responding, averaged $1,110 a year but reported 66.3% occupancy, against $1,730 and 85.4% occupancy for resorts opened from 2006 to 2015. A modest fee at an older resort can sit alongside thin occupancy.

Which costs hurt the most?

The maintenance fee. It never skips a year and keeps rising. In its advice to buyers, the FTC says these fees usually grow at or above inflation, suggests asking about a cap, and points out that you owe fees and taxes in years you never travel. Developers feel the strain as well. In the second quarter of 2024, Marriott Vacations Worldwide increased its sales reserve, which covers expected defaults on its owner loans, by $70 million; its 10-K says one reason was its belief that rising fees for 2023 and 2024 were pushing up delinquencies and defaults.

The purchase loan. Most buyers at the large developers finance through the developer. The 2025 10-Ks show 68% of Travel + Leisure’s sales financed (before loans repaid within 60 days), 67% at Hilton Grand Vacations and 57% at Marriott Vacations Worldwide. Marriott’s average new loan in 2025 was $30,900 over 11 years, with an average monthly payment of $505.

Developer, fiscal 2025 10-K	Average rate owners pay	Usual loan length
Hilton Grand Vacations	14.7% weighted average	Generally 10 years
Travel + Leisure Co., parent of Club Wyndham and WorldMark	14.6% weighted average	As long as 10 years
Marriott Vacations Worldwide	12.9% weighted average, originated loans	Generally 10 to 15 years

Compare what the developer pays. Travel + Leisure reported a 6.6% weighted average rate on its own non-recourse vacation ownership debt in 2025, under half the 14.6% it charged owners.

Special assessments. No industry average includes these one-off bills. A section below covers them.

What does the ten-year total look like?

From the sources: the $24,740 average price and $1,550 average fee from ARDA. For a financed buyer, a 10% down payment and the rest repaid over a decade at 14.6%. Per Travel + Leisure’s 10-K, the company usually requires at least 10% down (financed buyers put down 22% on average in 2025), lends for up to ten years, and averaged 14.6% in 2025.

Our assumptions, since no data covers them: a fee that grows either 4.7% a year, matching 2025, or 8.5% a year, near the pace from 2021 to 2025; no assessments; no exchange or club dues; one stay every year; and nothing back at resale in year ten.

On those terms, the fee reaches $2,343 in year ten on the slower path and $3,230 on the faster one, and adds up to $19,225 or $22,994 over the decade. The financed buyer borrows $22,266, which at 14.6% over 120 months is a $353.79 monthly payment and $20,189 of interest. Marriott’s 12.9% average would cut the interest to $17,471, and Hilton’s 14.7% would raise it to $20,352.

Scenario	Price	Ten years of fees	Loan interest	Total
Cash, fee growing 4.7%	$24,740	$19,225	$0	$43,965
Cash, fee growing 8.5%	$24,740	$22,994	$0	$47,734
Financed, fee growing 4.7%	$24,740	$19,225	$20,189	$64,154
Financed, fee growing 8.5%	$24,740	$22,994	$20,189	$67,923

Our arithmetic. Fee totals use unrounded yearly amounts.

Spread over ten one-week stays, that is $628 to $970 a night for the room alone, or $4,397 to $6,792 a year. The FTC tells buyers to add travel costs and every other yearly charge to find the true cost. Year eleven’s fee would run about $2,454 or $3,505, depending on the path.

How much does each stay cost if I skip years?

Disclosure: Candid Timeshare works with Vacation Ownership Consultants, a timeshare exit firm, and may be paid when readers hire it.

The math above assumes a stay every year. Skip some and each stay costs far more. Vacation Ownership Consultants (VOC), the exit firm we work with, describes an Idaho owner who bought in 2009, paid over $19,000 in fees by 2025, and used the unit four times, about $4,750 a visit by VOC’s count, not including the purchase.

VOC’s 2026 industry guide runs a financed case: payments of $720 a month come to $8,640 a year, the $1,480 fee lifts that to $10,120, and one week of use works out to about $1,445 a night. These are VOC’s own examples.

Can renting the week out cover the fee?

Not in the cases VOC has published. It set quoted rental payouts against actual 2025 fees for three points ownerships from its files:

Ownership (VOC’s label)	Points	Rental payout	2025 fee	Payout as share of fee
Diamond Resorts US Collection	5,500	$440.00	$1,718.90	25.6%
Bluegreen Vacations	8,000	$332.00	$982.80	33.8%
Hilton Grand Vacations	9,280	$1,020.80	$2,153.42	47.4%

VOC case data, from an interested party; percentages are our arithmetic.

VOC adds that most developers prohibit commercial renting, so check your resort’s rules before offering a week for rent.

What about special assessments?

An assessment lands when the resort decides its normal budget won’t cover costs. VOC reports three 2025 notices from its client files:

• Sedona, Arizona. A $1,500 charge per interval, due August 22, 2025, following a $975 assessment two years before. With the $1,120 fee, one owner’s 2025 total was $2,620. The association pointed to over 179 foreclosed intervals that had come back to it, and 80 more in foreclosure, as a major cause of its shortfall.
• Incline Village and Lake Tahoe, Nevada. $969.66 on top of a $2,441 fee, or $3,410.66, tied in the notice to a $3.5 million renovation.
• Honolulu, Hawaii. $1,200 per interval; an owner of two intervals owed $2,400 more than a $2,944 regular fee, for $5,344 altogether, with the bill’s only explanation reading “HOTEL INCOME SUPPLEMENTAL ASSESSMENT.”

Sedona shows the mechanism: when owners default, their unpaid fees leave a gap the remaining owners are asked to fill.

Developers see the risk too. Travel + Leisure’s 2025 10-K reports that a review of its portfolio “identified 17 resorts requiring significant owner reinvestment, or that are in markets that no longer align with owner demand,” and it lays out court-supervised restructuring aimed partly at avoiding “costly special assessments in the future.” When a notice arrives, see special assessments and legacy resorts.

What should I ask my resort in writing about costs?

Averages cannot price your own decade. Ask the resort or its management company in writing for:

1. This year’s operating and reserve budgets. Florida’s required resale contract statement names the current year’s operating and reserve budgets among the documents a buyer should review, and an owner has the same reason to see them.
2. A statement of everything owed. In Florida, the managing entity must answer a written request within 30 days with a signed certificate of assessments, transfer fees and other money owed now, plus amounts approved and due within 90 days.
3. Whether property taxes are in the fee or billed separately, a point Florida’s resale statement also requires.
4. Any assessment approved or under discussion, and the resort’s past assessments.
5. Whether the plan caps fee increases, the question the FTC tells buyers to ask.
6. Your loan balance, rate and payoff figure, if you financed.

Why don’t sales presentations show these totals?

A pitch usually sets the purchase price against ten years of hotel bills, a comparison built to favor the product. The fair comparison is the full total above against ten years of hotels you pick each time, with nothing owed in year eleven. According to the FTC, what a timeshare offers is vacation use, not investment value, even when a salesperson calls it “a solid financial asset.”

Most sales go to current owners, as the figures in the last section show. If the resort proposes to fix your costs with a bigger purchase, run these numbers on the new contract before you sign; see the upgrade trap.

How does an exit quote compare with staying?

Weigh any quote against the fees you would keep paying. Running totals at the 2025 average:

Years you keep paying	Total fees, 4.7% growth	Total fees, 8.5% growth
1	$1,550	$1,550
2	$3,173	$3,232
3	$4,872	$5,056
5	$8,514	$9,184
10	$19,225	$22,994

Our arithmetic from ARDA’s 2025 average; your fee will differ.

A one-time fee equal to two or three years of your own bill ends every year after it, and an open loan or an assessment makes staying cost more. The exit cost calculator runs this on your figures.

What should I do with this number?

Signed within the last two weeks? The whole total may still be undone. Read the rescission guide and mail your cancellation today.

Go to the resort first, on paper. Ask either the developer or its management company which surrender, deed-back or exit program applies, its price and its conditions, and keep the written answer. Then look up what similar weeks have sold for. The FTC’s advice is to “start by contacting your timeshare company directly.” VOC’s published process opens the same way, with the resort and the resale market. Developers set their own terms. Wyndham, for example, lists voluntary surrender among its options for eligible owners whose loan is paid in full, estimating about 20 weeks to process; it wants to be the owner’s “first and only call” and says options “may be limited or nonexistent” for owners who go elsewhere, so get its answer on paper before any outside firm hears from you. Horizons, the Holiday Inn Club Vacations program, charges owners who qualify $1,200 per contract to process and drops owners who involve a third-party exit company; apply and wait for its written decision before contacting any exit firm, even for a free consultation. For Westgate, Rebecca Tushnet’s law blog reports an exit company’s allegation, in a suit decided in 2024, that Westgate has made repossessions conditional on the owner swearing to no dealings with “any timeshare exit company, lawyer or law firm.” Westgate says the wording does not cover all lawyers; the court’s word for it was “sweeping.” Find out from the Legacy Program if such a condition applies.

Expect a sales pitch, and sign nothing. Existing owners accounted for 61% of 2025 sales volume in ARDA’s study. The 2025 10-Ks put them at 74% of Hilton Grand Vacations’ contract sales and roughly 70% of Marriott Vacations Worldwide’s, and Travel + Leisure reported upgrades at 72% of its net VOI (vacation ownership interest) sales. By phone or at an owner update meeting, keep your pen down. An upgrade leaves you owning more, and an upgrade-only reply is a refusal.

When the resort says no and the week won’t sell, or the exit price is out of reach, an exit firm’s free consultation and file review is the next thing to consider. VOC’s home page says its consultations are “supported by seasoned industry partners and experienced timeshare attorneys.” With VOC, you upload billing statements, the purchase agreement and any deed through its eligibility form; VOC checks which options fit your ownership; a free file review explains them; and only then do you decide if you want to enroll, at a one-time flat fee. In VOC’s words, it doesn’t “discuss billing until we’ve made sure you qualify.” Not every firm’s review is free. Hold any quote up against the tables above.

Other routes stay open. If the original sale involved misrepresentation you can document, your own attorney is a route; see hiring a timeshare attorney. A licensed resale broker is another, and the FTC favors resellers paid only after a sale. Every route is in our guide to getting out. Any firm you pay should read your documents before it quotes, put one flat fee in writing, name the attorney on your file so you can check that person with the state bar, and say in writing what happens to the fee if the developer refuses. It should never guarantee a result, claim a link to your developer, or tell you to stop paying. The red flags page has the full list.

Treat the loan as its own problem. The financed example carries about $20,000 of interest. Because the week has almost no resale value, few lenders will lend against it. A personal loan can replace the developer loan if you qualify for a lower rate; see the loan payoff page for what clearing it changes.

Disclosure: Candid Timeshare works with Vacation Ownership Consultants, a timeshare exit firm, and may be paid when readers hire it. This page’s author, Kira Fairbank, is a manager at Vacation Ownership Consultants. We cite its published case data on this page where marked.

This page is general information, not legal advice or financial advice. The figures are national averages plus the assumptions stated above, and your own fee, assessments, loan and exit options depend on documents we have not seen. Ask an attorney licensed in your state to review the ones that bind you before you act.