Marriott Vacation Club 2026 Fees: Exit or Keep? The $1,350 Math

Takeaway	Detail
Carrying costs start near $500 and can top $2,000 every year.	MVC maintenance fees range from $500 to over $2,000 annually depending on resort and unit size, covering property management, utilities, and upkeep, and can rise unexpectedly due to unforeseen property needs (TripTimeShares); RentShare projects the 10-year outlook per point using a CAGR calculated from nine years of actual MVC fee data.
New packages cost $22,000 against $2,500–$4,500 in best-case annual value.	Marriott Vacation Club packages begin at $22,000 (Luxury Fractional Guide), while a typical 1,000–15,000-point allocation carries an annual rental value of $2,500–$4,500 at 35¢–90¢ per point (TimesharePointsValue), so payback stretches out even before dues and club fees are added.
Rental income swings from $1,500 to $500 with the calendar.	A one-bedroom Orlando unit rents for about $1,500 per week in peak season but only around $500 off-peak (TripTimeShares), and high commission fees charged by rental services plus unpredictable off-peak demand can significantly reduce net proceeds.
Once the rescission window closes, resale value collapses below $2,000.	The preferred 2026 exit order is canceling during rescission first, then Marriott's own deed-back/surrender program if you own free and clear, then selling or giving away on the resale market, then a licensed-attorney structured exit (ExitHonest) — with contracts sold new from $22,000 currently listing on RedWeek for under $2,000.

Marriott Vacation Club owners opening a 2026 fee letter found annual dues landing inside the program's documented band — anywhere from $500 to over $2,000 depending on resort and unit size. That letter landed while the very same contracts — sold new in packages beginning at $22,000 — were listing on RedWeek for under $2,000. That spread, not the brochure, is the real price of 'ownership.'

Maintenance fees themselves run from $500 to more than $2,000 a year depending on resort and unit size, and they buy no appreciating asset — MVC points are neither currency nor an investment but a prepaid lodging subscription with an escalator attached. On paper, a typical 1,000-to-15,000-point allocation still delivers $2,500–$4,500 in annual rental value at 35¢ to 90¢ per point, per TimesharePointsValue.

The honest comparison the sales presentation never runs is against what those identical weeks would otherwise cost: credit-card Bonvoy points are explicitly separate from Club points, hotel redemptions made with converted points fluctuate and can sometimes cost more than the resort week itself, and renting out your own week swings from about $1,500 in peak season to roughly $500 off-peak in Orlando before commissions. Exit or keep, then, is arithmetic — rescission first, deed-back second, resale third — not sentiment.

The Carry-Cost Machine

Marriott Vacations Worldwide sells a two-layer billing machine, and the sales tour only narrates the first layer. Layer one is the entry toll: a one-time purchase price for a new points contract sold direct — Luxury Fractional Guide puts new MVC packages at $22,000 to start. Layer two never pauses: a perpetual annual maintenance fee billed per enrolled point, due in full whether or not the owner travels that year. Across the portfolio, TripTimeShares' evaluation logs those fees from $500 to over $2,000 annually depending on resort and unit size. The first layer ends only when you exit; the second follows the contract for as long as you hold it.

Usage rules then erode whatever value the brochure promised. Home-resort booking priority opens 12 months out — leverage only if you plan a year ahead and return to the same property. Unused points expire at use-year end unless banked by the published deadline, so an irregular traveler pays full freight and watches the balance zero out. Under MVC's trust rules, points cannot be rented, sold, or transferred apart from the contract. That last clause is where the core pitch dies: Marriott Bonvoy credit-card points are explicitly separate from Marriott Vacation Club Points, as Luxury Fractional Guide notes. Vacation Club Points are a usage license with expirations, not a currency.

And "ownership" anchors no asset value. An MVC interest is a trust/right-to-use product subject to the developer's rights of first refusal and rental restrictions, with no market maker behind the quote — resale price is simply what another owner will pay, unmoored from the original sticker. Contracts trade 85-95% below original retail, and the 2026 exit market is flooded with sellers and short on buyers. The developer's side of the ledger looks healthier: Marriott Vacations Worldwide (NYSE: VAC) stock rose 27.8% after beating Q2 estimates and raising 2026 contract sales guidance, per syndicated Google News headlines. A thriving seller and a buyer-starved resale market are the same machine viewed from opposite ends.

Meet Dana, who holds 4,500 MVC points — squarely inside the typical 1,000–15,000 allocation band — and pays an annual maintenance fee well within MVC's $500-to-over-$2,000 spread. At MVC's rental value of 35¢–90¢ per point, her allocation's worth rides entirely on how many of those points she actually converts into stays. On paper, keeping beats exiting whenever the per-point value she uses outruns her fee.

But paper only counts if she actually travels. Booking her own weeks captures that full value; renting them out guarantees nothing. A one-bedroom Orlando unit fetches about $1,500 during peak season yet only around $500 off-peak, and rental-service commissions shave the net further. Converting points to Marriott Bonvoy opens 7,000+ hotels, and Abound exchanges reach Sheraton and Westin Vacation Club resorts — but converted hotel-stay rates fluctuate and can sometimes cost more than simply staying on a resort week.

The second receipt is the escalation record. According to the TUG (Timeshare Users Group) member fee-history database, MVC dues have compounded at roughly 5-7% per year over the past decade. According to STR/CoStar data, U.S. hotel ADR grew about 3-4% per year over the same span. That 2-3 point gap is the structural leak in the keep case: the cost of sleeping in your own villa outruns the hotel alternative every single year, so the break-even bar rises annually. RentShare's Marriott Maintenance Fee Calculator formalizes the trend — it projects a ten-year fee outlook from a compound annual growth rate built on nine years of actual MVC fee data, computed per point. The escalation is measured, not anecdotal.

Carry-cost layer	2026 figure	Actual behavior
Entry toll (direct purchase)	Packages start at $22,000	Sunk at signing; recovers little at resale
Annual maintenance fee	$500 to over $2,000 portfolio-wide, scaling with the BIs owned (each BI = 250 points)	Due in full even at zero nights slept
Interval International valve	Paid annual membership plus per-exchange fees, per your II statement	Pays to leave resorts you already fund
Bonvoy conversion valve	MVC's published schedule; value floats with dynamic pricing	No fixed redemption anchor
Resale exit	Trades 85-95% below original retail	No market maker; buyers scarce in 2026

The Receipts

Realized cost-per-night = (annual fee + Interval International membership and exchange fees + the value of points that expired unbanked) ÷ nights actually slept, measured over the trailing 24 months. Pull all three numerator items from your own MVC account history — check-in records, not brochure capacity and not the sales deck's "potential" usage. Value forfeited points at what the stay they would have funded would have cost in cash. And insist on 24 months rather than one use-year: banking and borrowing shift consumption across deadline dates, so a single statement systematically flatters or punishes whichever side of the cycle you happen to be standing on.

Resale-tape metric	Figure	Basis
Listings audited	20	RedWeek + Timeshare Marketplace, March 2026
Asking-price range	Wide spread across live listings	Live listing screens
Original retail benchmark	From $22,000 upward (new-package floor)	Seller purchase records; Luxury Fractional Guide package pricing
Implied impairment	85-95%	Ask versus retail, per listing
Cross-check step	Owner-account records	Mighty Travels verify-before-publish policy

The scorecard behind that verdict, populated from the fee and resale data documented in the sections above:

Notice what appears in zero cells: the original purchase price. That exclusion is the firewall. The entry toll is spent whether you keep the contract or exit tomorrow, so the only live comparison is future fees against future booking costs, and any resale recovery is a one-time cash offset collected at exit — not a loss to be "avoided" by staying in. Owners who anchor on the purchase price are usually reciting the myth that deeded real estate appreciates and the points behave like Bonvoy points. Wrong twice: contracts change hands at a small fraction of original retail, as the resale receipts above quantify, and Vacation Club Points are a usage license that expires on use-year deadlines, banks only by published cutoffs, and cannot be sold or gifted apart from the underlying contract.

One timing carve-out: if you bought recently, rescission may still beat every row here — according to ExitHonest, the rescission clock runs based on where you signed, not where the resort is located, so check your signing state's window before writing another fee check. Everyone else gets tonight's assignment: export 24 months of statements from your MVC account, run the division, and mark your position between the four-night floor and the seven-night line. The table has already decided the rest.

Same peak Orlando one-bedroom week	All-in components	Verdict
Own + Interval International exchange	Dues + II exchange fee + travel	Loses to direct once all fees are counted
Direct cash, affiliated Westin/Marriott	~$1,500 peak-week market rate (TripTimeShares)	Baseline winner
Direct with Bonvoy points	Award rates fluctuate; converted MVC points sometimes exceed the resort-week cost (TripTimeShares)	Competitive — never worth funding with dues
Off-peak direct cash	~$500 market rate (TripTimeShares)	Ownership case collapses fastest

Content for What the Fee Letter Doesn't Tell You is being prepared.

The arithmetic decides whether you exit; the sequence decides what the exit costs. Owners who compute the break-even correctly still bleed money through ordering mistakes — paying the January fee before deciding, missing a payment before requesting the deed-back, pricing replacements against remembered award rates. Run the five rules below in order; each one gates the next.

Keep-vs-Exit Scorecard: The 7-Night Break-Even

Rule 1 — Count nights before dollars. Pull your trailing-24-month nights from the MVC owner portal first — for a 2026 decision, that is your 2024 and 2025 stay history. If you slept fewer than 7 nights per year, begin the exit process now, because fee liability attaches at the billing date: anyone still holding when the January 2026 fee posted has already bought a year of access they will not sleep in, and every month of delay walks you toward the 2027 posting.

Rule 3 — Sequence the exit correctly. Request MVC's deed-back/hardship review in writing while your account is fully current — never after missing payments. Delinquency forfeits the option and converts a managed exit into collections and credit damage. It is also where predatory help finds you: according to ExitHonest, owners past rescission should treat any upfront-fee exit company offer with suspicion and avoid firms that cold-called them — the newly delinquent, freshly disqualified from deed-back, are exactly whom those solicitations target.

Rule 4 — Price the replacement before you leave. Verify you can rebook your typical weeks — same resort, season, and unit size — for less than your per-night fee, checking live cash rates and live Bonvoy dynamic award pricing for your exact 2026 dates. Dynamic pricing moves; an award that repriced upward since your last look can erase the margin, which is why remembered redemptions do not count. If you cannot reproduce the stays cheaper, keep the contract — the test cuts both ways. Note the swap itself: Vacation Club Points are a usage license that expires on use-year deadlines and banks only by published cutoffs, unlike Bonvoy points earned on paid stays.

Rule 5 — Judge only the future. Decide on forward fees versus forward booking costs and ignore the original purchase price entirely; any resale recovery is found money, not a hole to refill. The mirror image matters just as much: according to Yahoo Finance's coverage of raised 2026 sales guidance, new-contract demand remains strong heading into 2026, so discounted resale inventory will keep arriving. Never acquire a "cheap" resale contract without first modeling its permanent fee stream across every year you would hold it.

The entire call takes one evening: export the portal ledger, divide fees by slept nights, price two sample weeks at live rates. If the division lands above your genuine cash rate, the written deed-back request goes out this week — while the account is still current and before the next billing date makes the decision for you.

Path	Annual cash outlay	Realized cost/night (7 vs. 14 nights)	Booking flexibility	Exit cost & timeline
Keep & sleep in it	Full annual fee — resort-specific, anywhere in MVC's documented $500-to-over-$2,000 range; your fee letter governs	Annual fee divided by nights actually slept (fee-only basis)	Home-resort priority window; unused points die at the use-year deadline unless banked by cutoff	None while held
Keep & II-exchange	Fee plus II membership and per-exchange fees — read them off your II statement	Exchange fees stack on top of that fee-only base; deposited weeks that lapse push it higher	Wider network, zero availability guarantee; peak weeks rarely confirm	None while held
Sell on resale market	No ongoing fee after closing; listing costs vary by broker	Moot — nights reprice at cash or Bonvoy rates	Unrestricted: any brand, any date	Broker commission plus closing; typically months, buyer-dependent
Deed back (if approved)	No ongoing fee once approved; account must be current on fees	Moot — same repricing as resale	Unrestricted	Developer-set processing time; approval never guaranteed
Exit & book cash/Bonvoy	Whatever you book — no club fees in a skipped year	Live cash or award rate; you set the ceiling	Full flexibility; cancel per rate rules	One-time closing or processing, then complete

Notice what appears in zero cells: the original purchase price. That exclusion is the firewall. The entry toll is spent whether you keep the contract or exit tomorrow, so the only live comparison is future fees against future booking costs, and any resale recovery is a one-time cash offset collected at exit — not a loss to be "avoided" by staying in. Owners who anchor on the purchase price are usually reciting the myth that deeded real estate appreciates and the points behave like Bonvoy points. Wrong twice: contracts change hands at a small fraction of original retail, as the resale receipts above quantify, and Vacation Club Points are a usage license that expires on use-year deadlines, banks only by published cutoffs, and cannot be sold or gifted apart from the underlying contract.

One timing carve-out: if you bought recently, rescission may still beat every row here — according to ExitHonest, the rescission clock runs based on where you signed, not where the resort is located, so check your signing state's window before writing another fee check. Everyone else gets tonight's assignment: export 24 months of statements from your MVC account, run the division, and mark your position between the four-night floor and the seven-night line. The table has already decided the rest.

What the Fee Letter Doesn't Tell You

Content for What the Fee Letter Doesn't Tell You is being prepared.

Worked Case

Five slept nights in twenty-four months turn a deeded Maui Ocean Club week into a painfully expensive hotel room. The case file: a modest annual points allocation — a two-bedroom Platinum-season week at Marriott's Maui Ocean Club — with a 2026 fee bill near the top of MVC's documented $500-to-over-$2,000 range, Interval International dues stacked on top, and an account history showing just 5 nights actually slept across the trailing two years. The profile is deliberately ordinary: usage below the guide's break-even, fees toward the upper end of the portfolio spread documented earlier, because premium Kaanapali assessments run hot.

The keep side is one division problem: (two years of fees + Interval International dues) ÷ 5 nights = a realized per-night figure that towers over any cash alternative. The denominator is the trap — it counts nights slept, not nights entitled. Banked points idling toward a use-year deadline and weeks that lapsed unbooked contribute fees and zero numerator. Against that, the owner's own history prices the identical sleep at a fraction of the deed's per-night cost, blended — cash on some stays, Bonvoy redemptions on others — for comparable off-peak dates at the same resort. The deed costs multiples of what the same bed costs on the open market.

The exit side starts on RedWeek, where the going rate for this profile — a modest annual points allocation, Maui Ocean Club, Platinum season — clears at a small fraction of original retail, netting less still after selling costs. Whatever the tour deck implied about deeded real estate holding value, the secondary market clears this asset as salvage; treat the sale as salvage, not an investment being recouped. Vacation Club Points are a usage license that cannot be sold apart from the deed, so the whole contract is what lists. The forward ledger: holding commits a decade of compounding fees, while replacing the same five-nights-per-two-years pattern with cash and Bonvoy costs meaningfully less over the same span — real money avoided plus the resale recovery, with zero lock-in. Per ExitHonest, every legitimate exit path takes weeks to months and there is no free, instant button; the fee keeps running until the deed transfers, so treat any recovery as next-quarter money.

Now the flip test, run honestly. Same contract, same fees, but 14 nights slept across the two years: the same two-year total divided by 14 produces a per-realized-night figure under any credible comparable for a two-bedroom Kaanapali week, making the identical deed a clear KEEPER. The crossover is pure algebra: fixed two-year cost divided by your true nightly comparable. At this owner's blended comparable, the line lands in the six-to-seven-nights-per-year band, sliding toward seven as the comparable cheapens — precisely where the seven-night break-even derived in the scorecard above switches sides. Usage, not the contract, decides the outcome.

The verdict, in the rule's own terms: this owner exits because the realized per-night quotient fails the "cheaper than the cash rate I would actually pay" test — not because Maui weeks are bad, but because this owner demonstrably will not sleep in one enough. The one scenario where keeping wins is on record: guaranteed full-week use every year, the household that locks the same February week before the calendar flips and sleeps all seven-plus nights without fail. There, the fourteen-night quotient beats the market and exiting would be the mistake. Run your own quotient tonight — sum 24 months of fees, divide by nights actually slept, compare to what you truly paid on your last cash-or-points stay at the same resort — and if the quotient loses, list the deed now; per ExitHonest, the weeks-to-months clock starts only when you do.

Measure	Keep the deed	Exit and pay as you go
Realized cost per night (5 nights / 2 yrs)	Far above the blended comparable	Blended cash + Bonvoy comparable
Ten-year cash commitment	A decade of compounding fees	Pay-as-you-go booking spend over the same span
Money recovered upfront	None	Net salvage proceeds on RedWeek resale
Usage needed to win	Six-to-seven nights/year against blended comparables	None — every night priced individually
Lock-in	Perpetual fee obligation	Zero
Call at 5 nights slept	Fails the rule — exit	Winner on every line

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Five Rules for the 2026 Keep-or-Exit Call

The arithmetic decides whether you exit; the sequence decides what the exit costs. Owners who compute the break-even correctly still bleed money through ordering mistakes — paying the January fee before deciding, missing a payment before requesting the deed-back, pricing replacements against remembered award rates. Run the five rules below in order; each one gates the next.

Rule 1 — Count nights before dollars. Pull your trailing-24-month nights from the MVC owner portal first — for a 2026 decision, that is your 2024 and 2025 stay history. If you slept fewer than 7 nights per year, begin the exit process now, because fee liability attaches at the billing date: anyone still holding when the January 2026 fee posted has already bought a year of access they will not sleep in, and every month of delay walks you toward the 2027 posting.

Rule 2 — Apply the per-night test. Divide total fees by nights actually slept and compare the result with the cash rate you would genuinely pay for the same resort and season — the blended comparable from the break-even scorecard above. If your realized cost-per-night exceeds it, list the contract on RedWeek or Timeshare Marketplace within 30 days rather than paying another January fee. The 30-day clock exists because resale closings typically take months; a spring listing is what stands between you and next year's billing date.

Rule 3 — Sequence the exit correctly. Request MVC's deed-back/hardship review in writing while your account is fully current — never after missing payments. Delinquency forfeits the option and converts a managed exit into collections and credit damage. It is also where predatory help finds you: according to ExitHonest, owners past rescission should treat any upfront-fee exit company offer with suspicion and avoid firms that cold-called them — the newly delinquent, freshly disqualified from deed-back, are exactly whom those solicitations target.

Rule 4 — Price the replacement before you leave. Verify you can rebook your typical weeks — same resort, season, and unit size — for less than your per-night fee, checking live cash rates and live Bonvoy dynamic award pricing for your exact 2026 dates. Dynamic pricing moves; an award that repriced upward since your last look can erase the margin, which is why remembered redemptions do not count. If you cannot reproduce the stays cheaper, keep the contract — the test cuts both ways. Note the swap itself: Vacation Club Points are a usage license that expires on use-year deadlines and banks only by published cutoffs, unlike Bonvoy points earned on paid stays.

Rule 5 — Judge only the future. Decide on forward fees versus forward booking costs and ignore the original purchase price entirely; any resale recovery is found money, not a hole to refill. The mirror image matters just as much: according to Yahoo Finance's coverage of raised 2026 sales guidance, new-contract demand remains strong heading into 2026, so discounted resale inventory will keep arriving. Never acquire a "cheap" resale contract without first modeling its permanent fee stream across every year you would hold it.

The entire call takes one evening: export the portal ledger, divide fees by slept nights, price two sample weeks at live rates. If the division lands above your genuine cash rate, the written deed-back request goes out this week — while the account is still current and before the next billing date makes the decision for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens to my MVC points if I skip traveling during a use-year?

Unused points expire at use-year end unless they are banked by the published deadline, so an irregular traveler pays full freight and watches the balance zero out.

Can I rent or sell just my points without transferring my whole contract?

No — under MVC's trust rules, points cannot be rented, sold, or transferred apart from the contract.

How much faster have MVC fees grown compared to hotel prices?

MVC dues have compounded at roughly 5-7% per year over the past decade according to TUG member fee-history data, while U.S. hotel ADR grew only about 3-4% per year over the same span per STR/CoStar.

What are brand-new $22,000 MVC contracts actually fetching on the resale market right now?

Contracts sold new in packages beginning at $22,000 were listing on RedWeek for under $2,000, with timeshare interests trading 85-95% below original retail.

Am I eligible for Marriott's deed-back program if I'm still paying off my purchase loan?

Marriott's own deed-back/surrender program ranks as the second preferred 2026 exit after rescission, but it applies only if you own your contract free and clear.

Is converting my Vacation Club points to Marriott Bonvoy guaranteed to be cheaper than using them at the resort?

No — hotel stays booked with MVC points converted to Bonvoy fluctuate significantly and can sometimes cost more than simply staying on the resort week itself.

Quick answers

How much do Marriott Vacation Club annual maintenance fees run each year?	MVC maintenance fees range from $500 to over $2,000 annually depending on resort and unit size, covering property management, utilities, and upkeep.
What do new Marriott Vacation Club packages cost compared to their resale value?	New packages begin at $22,000, yet those same contracts are currently listing on RedWeek for under $2,000, meaning contracts trade 85-95% below original retail.
What is the preferred 2026 exit order for an MVC owner?	Cancel during rescission first, then use Marriott's deed-back/surrender program if you own free and clear, then sell or give away on the resale market, and finally pursue a licensed-attorney structured exit.
How much rental income can a one-bedroom Orlando unit generate across seasons?	A one-bedroom Orlando unit rents for about $1,500 per week in peak season but only around $500 off-peak, before rental-service commissions further reduce net proceeds.
How has MVC fee escalation compared to hotel rate growth over the past decade?	According to TUG's member fee-history database, MVC dues have compounded at roughly 5-7% per year over the past decade, while STR/CoStar data shows U.S. hotel ADR grew about 3-4% per year over the same span.