Pricing your timeshare unit for the rental market can be an exercise in frustration. If you are like most people, you will not realize that you cannot use your timeshare week until it is literally a month or two away. This, then, will lead you to make a last-minute advertising push with a rock-bottom price intended to grab somebody's — anybody's — attention while they are planning their own last-minute vacation. And since the vacationer will know that you need him far more than he needs you at that point, he will shop around to ensure that he is paying the absolute minimum that he can for a timeshare-unit rental in his city of choice.

The one good thing about this scenario is the fact that it is the most common one out there. This, in and of itself, gives you an easy way to see what other, similar timeshare units are listing for — even those available in your very same resort during the exact same week. Armed with this market information, you can price your unit just a hair lower than other people have priced theirs, making yourself the most likely candidate to get that last-minute vacation shopper's business. To help you understand this point, take a look at the following breakdowns of popular vacation destination timeshares that were posted for rent about a month before Christmas in 2005.

Orlando, Florida

If you had done about ten minutes' worth of searching on the World Wide Web in early December 2005, you would have found no fewer than 130 timeshare units available for rent in the Orlando area alone.

• On the Timeshare User's Group Web site, the ads ranged in price from $275 for a one-bedroom unit that sleeps two people to $850 for a two-bedroom unit that sleeps six people.

• On the TimeSharing Today Web site, the ads ranged in price from $575 for a one-bedroom unit that sleeps four people to $1,400 for a three-bedroom unit that sleeps as many as ten people.

• On the eBay Web site, the ads ranged in price from $225 for a three-bedroom unit that sleeps eight people to $1,495 for a two-bedroom unit that sleeps six people.

What do these numbers tell you in terms of setting a market value for your own timeshare rental? For starters, they tell you that prices are literally all over the map in Orlando — and that they often are deeply discounted by owners who desperately need to find a renter for a timeshare week that is coming up quickly (such as the case of the $225 three-bedroom unit, which was available the very next week).

These numbers also tell you, though, that if you own a one-bedroom unit, you would be in the ballpark of general pricing if you listed it at $300 to $600 for the week's worth of use. Plus, you could further narrow that number down by searching through the ads for other units listed at, or near, your home resort. If one-bedrooms in your resort are listing at $500, you could probably increase your odds of finding a renter by lowering your price only slightly, to $450 or $475.

Take a look at the figures for Las Vegas and Hawaii, below, and you will begin to understand how searching for prices in this manner can help you to set yours in a way that will make a rental deal more or less likely to actually happen.

Las Vegas, Nevada

That same ten minutes' worth of searching on the World Wide Web in early December 2005 would have led you to about twenty timeshare units available for rent in the Las Vegas area:

• On the Timeshare User's Group Web site, the ads ranged in price from $300 for a one-bedroom unit that sleeps four people to $750 for a one-bedroom unit that sleeps four people.

• On the TimeSharing Today Web site, the ads ranged in price from $500 for a one-bedroom unit that sleeps four people to $1,000 for a two-bedroom unit that sleeps as many as six people.

• On the eBay Web site, the ads ranged in price from $300 for a studio unit that sleeps two people to $1,000 for a two-bedroom unit that sleeps as many as six people.

As with the Orlando units, the time of year affects the pricing greatly — with Christmas and New Year's units priced the lowest, since the holidays were merely a month away. But you would have been able to deduce from these numbers that your own one-bedroom timeshare unit might be considered a relative bargain had you priced it between $300 and $500.

Hawaii

Again, had you spent your ten minutes' worth of time searching on the World Wide Web in early December 2005, you would have come across about 150 timeshare units available for rent in Hawaii:

• On the Timeshare User's Group Web site, the ads ranged in price from $499 for a one-bedroom unit in Waikiki that sleeps four people to $1,100 for a two-bedroom unit on Kauai that sleeps as many as six people.

• On the TimeSharing Today Web site, the ads ranged in price from $650 for a one-bedroom unit on Molokai that sleeps as many as four people to $2,700 for a two-bedroom unit on the Big Island of Hawaii that sleeps as many as six people.

• On the eBay Web site, the ads ranged in price from $399 for a two-bedroom unit on Kauai that sleeps as many as eight people to $1,700 for a one-bedroom unit on Kauai that sleeps up to four people.

As with the examples in Orlando and Las Vegas, these Hawaii numbers show you that prices are literally all over the map — and often are dependent on how close to the timeshare usage date the ad is placed, more so than the actual unit or number of people that it sleeps.

Your one-bedroom timeshare unit, in this Hawaii rental marketplace, would have been reasonably priced anywhere from $400 to $1,000, depending on how many people it sleeps. That's a very wide range, one that you could use to your advantage if you wanted to undercut your competition by pricing your unit at the lower end of the scale.

What the Numbers Mean

The most important thing to remember, based on all three of the previous examples, is that the timeshare rental market is literally all over the map in every destination — and that it is continuing to adjust itself every day. As more and more people search through these popular Web sites to see what other timeshare owners are charging for similar rentals, more and more prices will be set toward the bottom of the financial curve (at least by people who really do want to find a renter).

If you want to make sure that you have the best chance of finding bargain-hunters online to rent your timeshare unit, you will have to not only set your rental fee competitively, but also check back daily on each of the Web sites where you list it to ensure that you have not been under-priced by somebody else. You also will have to mount an eye-catching advertising campaign so that your unit stands out among the rest.